Opinion: Perspective - VCCP is a smart, but expensive, start for Chime.(Vallance Carruthers Coleman Priest)

So another one bites the dust. VCCP is the third creative agency this year to sacrifice its liberty in return for some serious booty And, of course, the premium on the shrinking mound of successful independent agencies has just gone up a notch. Calculators out, boys.

And what a deal. OK, there's no question that VCCP is a good agency.

Nice guys, nice ads, IPA Effectiveness Grand Prix-winners, billings up 41 per cent last year to almost pounds 73 million, O2, Coca-Cola, Hyundai for clients. But pounds 30 million. pounds 30 million for a three year-old agency, arguably overly reliant on one particular client. pounds 30 million on a pre-tax profit of pounds 900,000. pounds 30 million when the advertising recovery is far from reaching full speed.

The agency's profits track record over the past three years makes for juicy reading, and goes some way to explaining the price tag: VCCP made a profit of pounds 277,000 in its first year, pounds 484,000 in its second and then pounds 913,000 in 2004. That's an impressive trajectory, though it's hard to see it being sustained at a similar rate over the medium term.

Even so, I just can't get over that pounds 30 million. It's a heck of a lot of swag. And a shade more generous, relatively speaking, than Delaney Lund Knox Warren & Partners' pounds 38 million, which itself was enough to make eyes water just four months ago. So in three years, Messers Vallance, Coleman, Carruthers and Priest - whom the cautious would not have bet money on - have netted pounds 3 million each up front and, subject to some pretty tough targets, can look forward to the same again in a few years time.

So what, exactly, is Chime Communications buying? Crudely put, of course, it's buying a core team of people who now have enough money to retire on but who will probably work their nuts off for a few years to get their earn-outs. It's also buying an agency with a demonstrable reputation for doing work that works, which certainly deserves a premium in the current market. And an agency whose most famous creative work (O2) is going off the ...