Opinion: Perspective - So who is prepared to meet Grey's asking price?(advertising agency for sale)

When Ed Meyer started working on the Procter & Gamble business at Grey, Publicis' Maurice Levy was 14 years old, Sir Martin Sorrell was 11, and Omnicom's John Wren a tender four.

I mention this interesting piece of trivia because it holds a couple of keys to what happens to Grey. The advertising network has hired Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase to test a possible sale of the company, which - thanks to the flurry of trading in Grey shares that greeted the news - now carries a pretty price tag of pounds 1.3 billion. And the politics and personalities involved means the sale will be a saga to savour.

For any purchaser, Grey represents an attractive degree of untapped potential.

There's no doubt that the company has been underplayed on the international stage. Despite its lean divisional structure, Grey lags in offering a full-bodied integrated proposition: operating margins are way below its competitors (less than 3 per cent compared with more than 14 per cent for the bigger holding companies); its media network is patchy (and falling behind its competitors by the day) and its creative reputation dull.

So news of a sale should have contenders slavering. But the P&G factor will play a crucial role in determining Grey's fate. Of the potential wooers, WPP's extensive relationship with Unilever could prove a barrier.

Unilever has gone on record to say that it would not mind co-habiting with P&G as long as there were clear blockades between the businesses; P&G, though, might not be as sanguine.

Mind you, P&G could also resist having all of its business handled by a single holding company, should Publicis (P&G's other marketing partner) throw its wallet into the ring. Certainly, P&G is said to have recently told both Meyer and Levy it wants to maintain multiple agency partners.