Publicis and Omnicom, call it all off.

Publicis and Omnicom call it off. The 50:50 mega-merger of 35 billion us dollars announced 9 months ago, is being eh, 'de-coupled'.

The Agencies, which own a large number of established brands in the market, had difficulties in completing transactions in a timely manner (according to an Omnicom statement) and Omnicom have spent circa 48 million usd in the merger thus far. Reading between the lines, they're putting the blame on Publicis.

It also seems that the announcement was communicated initially via Twitter (or it 'leaked') and Clients were not formally informed per se. Rumours abound of rows about key positions (typical merger nonsense) but one wonders why these sorts of issues weren't dealt with pre-merger? Seemingly the CFO position (who'd oversee the merger) was a big issue.

Clearly, knowing both Agencies well, there was always going to be a French Versus American way of doing things and trust me, both are very, very different. The launch photocall (above) with The Eiffel Tower in the background, was the start of the "I am in control here" piece.

Financially too, with savings of "$500 million" touted as a reason from the outset to do the merger, hardly seemed a good enough reason.

It also puts WPP back to top of the heap without the new entity.
And it damages the reputation of both Publicis and Omnicom in not being able to complete this.

At least those "$500 million" in savings won't happen and so those job losses (the savings) are now safer. Apart from that, pretty pathetic.