Mediaocean Relocating to Lower Manhattan as Firm Explores Sale

(Bloomberg) -- Mediaocean LLC, the advertising-software provider that's exploring a potential sale, will relocate its headquarters to a smaller space in Manhattan's Financial District as it seeks to trim its real estate costs.

The company, currently based at RXR Realty's 620 Sixth Ave., signed a 10-year lease for the entire eighth floor of Silverstein Properties Inc.'s 120 Broadway, a Beaux Arts-style building two blocks from the New York Stock Exchange. Mediaocean will occupy 51,000 square feet (4,700 square meters), compared with about 89,000 square feet in its existing headquarters, said Chief of Staff Jessica Breault Ramirez.

“We've had a lot of changes in the past few years and our space just became too large,” she said in an interview. “The pricing was very favorable for us compared to where we currently are, but we also just love the area downtown -- it's very hip and up-and-coming.”

In 2015, private equity firm Vista Equity Partners purchased a majority stake in Mediaocean. The company has since laid off a number of employees, shifted some staff to less-expensive cities including Chicago and Pune, India, and offered workers more flexibility to work from home. Still, headcount has increased since the transaction, Ramirez said. Mediaocean has about 200 employees in New York and 1,000 worldwide.

The company hired banks to help weigh a sale that could value it at more than $1.5 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported in October, citing people familiar with the matter.

“That's something that we're still exploring, but there's nothing new to address with that just yet,” Ramirez said.

Mediaocean intends to move into 120 Broadway, also known as the Equitable Building, before the end of the year, joining tenants including New York Life Insurance Co. and Macmillan Publishers.

The 40-story tower, completed in 1915, was once the biggest office building in the world. Silverstein is working on a $50 million renovation project to restore the property and provide amenities including fitness classes and improved rooftop space, according to a joint statement from the developer and Mediaocean.

To contact the reporter on this story: Lily Katz in New York at lkatz31@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Debarati Roy at droy5@bloomberg.net, Christine Maurus

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