The sale is expected to be completed by the end of 2021, subject to completion of the relevant shareholder, legal and regulatory processes.

The sale would allow Reputation Intelligence to invest in its insight and social media monitoring work while also improving its cloud-based capabilities in analytics and artificial intelligence.

Ian Griffiths, deputy chief executive and chief financial officer at Kantar, said: “Under this new ownership structure Reputation Intelligence would have the flexibility and capacity to prioritise its growth and innovation priorities.

“At the same time, this proposed transaction would allow our media division to focus on its highest priority growth platforms such as cross media audience measurement and new digital approaches for our advertising intelligence and TGI offerings.”

Petra Masinova, global director and future chief executive of Reputation Intelligence, said: “With this proposed sale, we would become a focused company with a strong software and technology-oriented investor and would be better placed to invest to accelerate our product roadmap.”

JT Treadwell, managing director at STG, said: “We are very excited by the opportunity to partner with Reputation Intelligence and the Kantar organisation to create an independent market leading data and software company in the communications and reputation management sector.

“We look forward to working with Petra and the new team to invest, grow and innovate together.”