Microsoft Unloads Razorfish To The French For $530 Million

More than two years after buying advertising network aQuantive for $6 billion , Microsoft finally unloaded the digital advertising agency that came with that deal. It sold Razorfish to French advertising conglomerate Publicis Groupe for $530 million in a combination stock-and-cash transaction. The price was 1.4 times Razorfish's 2008 sales of $380 million. Microsoft has been shopping Razorfish around all summer. It was reportedly hoping to get $600 to $700 million, but the advertising recession didn't help. Microsoft settled for a slight discount to that.