Our experience in managing costs and cash in times of crisis and the strength of our balance sheet will help us weather this storm and be ready for recovery.
Our country organization makes us more responsive and agile, which is a significant advantage in dealing with a crisis of this magnitude and adapting in real time to the changing situation in each market. Our Power of One model gives our clients access to all of the Groupe’s expertise in creative, media, data and technology, and thus benefit from all the resources they need in this context.
We have unparalleled assets. With the acquisition of Epsilon, the leader in large-scale marketing personalization using data, we have placed it at the heart of the Groupe’s activities. Its integration is now complete. Against a backdrop of budget attrition in the US consumer products sector, which weighed on our organic growth in 2019, the acquisition of Epsilon enabled us to record a sharp increase in our net income to 9.3% and allows the combination of data + technology expertise, the future of our industry, to now account for 30% of the Groupe’s activities.
We also renewed the management teams at Publicis Sapient and repositioned its operations around the transformation of companies, through an organization by industrial sectors. At the same time, we have continued to promote a new generation of leader to strategic positions, in our most iconic brands, our biggest countries, for our top clients.
The Groupe’s financial strength is well established, and it has been reconfirmed in 2019. Our performance once again ranks among the best in the sector, with an increase in operating margin of 11.6% and diluted earnings per share of 8.9%, while investing significantly in our talent. Our experience in managing costs and cash in times of crisis and the strength of our balance sheet will help us weather this storm and be ready for recovery.
Finally, and most importantly for the future, our model and our offer have proven their success with new clients, demonstrated in the major pitch wins of the last year: Disney, Mondelez and Novartis, to name a few. We were also ranked first in new business wins by Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan for the second year running. This momentum will continue into early 2020, and we are developing specific new products, combining the expertise of Epsilon and the leading position of Publicis Media in the US, to help our clients overcome the crisis.
In 2019, we therefore completed our transformation, both in terms of assets and organization. Thanks to Maurice Lévy’s vision, we are uniquely positioned today to become the indispensable partner of our clients, today and tomorrow. This profound transformation allows us to face the strong shocks caused by the current crisis under good conditions. Even if no one knows the extent of it because it is affecting all sectors worldwide, the Publicis Groupe has solid foundations and an agile structure that increase its resilience.
Our model and our off er have proven their success with new clients, demonstrated in the major pitch wins of the last year.
I would like to thank all of Publicis Groupe’s teams for their courage and dedication during this period and more particularly the members of the Management Committee for their commitment at all times to our employees and our clients. I would also like to thank the Supervisory Board and its Chairman for their advice and support, especially so at this time when we need their experience more than ever to project us into the future
Finally, I would like to thank our customers and shareholders for their continued trust. Our Groupe is fully committed to continuously improving its products and services and being one step ahead, while demonstrating its financial strength. This constant mobilization becomes even more necessary in the context of the very great uncertainty we have been experiencing for several weeks now.