Ad Man

9 May 2014 By Pierre Briançon

The end of the merger between the French advertising company and its U.S. rival Omnicom leaves Publicis without a plan for replacing 72-year-old CEO Maurice Levy. That is a long-standing issue that the board repeatedly failed to address. It has just taken on a new urgency.

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Maurice Levy, the chief executive officer of French advertising group Publicis, said on May 9 that he still has the support of the company’s supervisory board after the failure of its merger plans with U.S. rival Omnicom. Levy, 72, appointed to the job in 1987, added that finding a successor would be the board’s first task.

In a joint release, Publicis and Omnicom had earlier said that they would terminate their merger agreement, “in view of difficulties in completing the transaction within a reasonable timeframe.”

“I was very attached to the concept of equality and was not ready to cede on this point,” Levy told Reuters. He added that Omnicom and Publicis clashed on the name of the new group’s chief financial officer, which both sides wanted to appoint.

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