Pounds 6m for Walker in M&C Saatchi float.(Christine Walker )

Christine Walker is set to make a paper fortune of at least pounds 6 million after Walker Media was valued at pounds 18 million for the forthcoming M&C Saatchi IPO.

Walker and her partner, Phil Georgiadis, will initially walk away with pounds 3 million and pounds 1.5 million respectively. At the end of a two-year lock-in period, Walker stands to pocket an additional pounds 3 million.

M&C will increase its shareholding in Walker Media from 46 per cent to 75 per cent before the IPO in mid-July by offering the current shareholders about 3.5 million of its own shares in exchange.

Meanwhile, the M&C founders, Maurice and Charles Saatchi, David Kershaw, Bill Muirhead and Jeremy Sinclair, will each receive 13.7 per cent of shares, worth about pounds 9 million. Executives such as the European chairman, Nick Hurrell, and the UK chairman, Moray MacLennan, will be worth about pounds 2.4 million, while the UK executive creative directors, Simon Dicketts and James Lowther, will each be worth about pounds 2 million.

The acquisition of a bigger stake in Walker will allow M&C to benefit from the media buyer's faster growth rate and enhance the attractiveness of the shares being offered to the public. Combined pre-tax profits for 2003 would have been pounds 7.5 million.

Some of the new funds to be raised from the IPO will be used to extend the ...