Ben Casey, who co-founded Manchester creative consultancy The Chase in 1986 with the late Lionel Hatch, is stepping back from day-to-day leadership as the firm absorbs two complementary businesses and installs a new management team.

The Chase has acquired Squad, the consumer-focused agency founded in 2008 by Rob Gray and David Barraclough, in a share exchange deal. Barraclough and Gray swapped their Squad shareholding for shares in The Chase. The firm has also fully acquired The Chase Films, the Oscar- and BAFTA-nominated production agency led by Mark Gill and Alex Roberts, which began as a joint venture roughly a decade ago. Gill and Roberts become The Chase shareholders, and The Chase Films will continue working directly with clients and other agencies.

The deal reshapes a 40-strong business known for B2B and public sector work for clients including Royal Mail, AstraZeneca and UCL. Squad brings a consumer portfolio featuring Eurocamp, JW Lees Brewery, Umbro and ZSL London Zoo. The combined team is already working for BASF, Manchester United, M&S Bank and Smith+Nephew. The Chase says the acquisitions will produce no redundancies and no client conflicts.

The two agencies had been collaborating for around two years before the deal. 'Ben approached us about this idea of coming together,' Barraclough says. 'And we've been collaborating closely by sharing a building, and then that led us to doing the deal, and fully bringing the businesses together.'

The leadership structure now splits strategic and creative direction. Gray becomes managing and strategy director; Barraclough becomes creative director. Casey and The Chase director Bev Hutchinson serve as co-chairs, though with different levels of engagement. Hutchinson remains actively involved, while Casey takes a more ceremonial role. Casey 'is a figurehead and a source of counsel and wisdom, but he's less involved in the day-to-day client and work side of things,' Gray says.

The enlarged Chase aims to cover the full range of services contemporary brands demand. The merger positions the agency to deliver 'all those things that a modern brand needs,' according to Barraclough.

Gray frames the expansion in terms of breadth. 'It's about more variety of work across more disciplines, broadening the breadth of what we do, so we can work with clients to bring creativity in a cohesive way across all the touchpoints they've got,' he says.

Barraclough identifies coherence across channels as the core problem the expanded offer addresses. 'I think one of the things clients really struggle with is how they remain coherent across so many touchpoints, while moving at such pace. How do they build a coherent brand across those, and still be creative?' he says.

Further capability additions are planned, Barraclough adds, spanning motion design, animation, writing, sound design, and potentially environments and interior design. 'As brands move more, sound more, and are more experiential, there are opportunities to extend what we're doing to other areas,' he says.

For a firm approaching its fifth decade, the restructuring settles the succession question while giving the founders of Squad control of the combined creative direction.