American Wendy Clark (lead image) will depart her role as dentsu’s global CEO after just two years following the Tokyo-based holding company’s decision to combine its international and Japanese subsidiaries into a single operation.
The highly-regarded Clark was previously CEO of Omnicom’s DDB agencies before being poached to dentsu.
Clark will remain in her current role until 31st December after dentsu chiefs decided to “discontinue the role”, preferring to appoint “one management team” to run the company globally.
In a statement, dentsu bosses said it was working on a “new global management structure, including changes to its senior management line-up”. It’s understood the plans will be made public in the coming months.
Under the new structure that takes effect on 1 January 2023, Hiroshi Igarashi, the chief executive and president of Dentsu Group Inc, will oversee all four regions that the agency group operates – the Americas, APAC (where Australia operates), EMEA and Japan.
Dentsu added it wanted a leadership team that “will comprise a culturally diverse group of leaders” and plans to “globally integrate each of its corporate functions to build a common management platform”.
It added: “These plans mark a major step forward in the leadership team’s on-going business transformation efforts across the entire group following the launch of the comprehensive [internal] review in 2020.
“Following a series of extensive discussions, the company’s senior leadership team agreed to make structural changes to the group designed to accelerate business transformation, further enhance management capabilities and deepen client relationships.”
Clark said of her leaving: “It’s hard to be prouder of our 46,000-plus Dentsu International team members and leadership. It’s their brilliant thinking, hard work and commitment that has accelerated the opportunity for Dentsu International to now become fully integrated into Dentsu Group and led by One Management Team.
“While I will miss this team greatly, my confidence in them could not be higher and I will be cheering for their many successes to come.”
On Clark’s pending departure, Igarashi said: “We are deeply grateful to Wendy for the significant contribution she has made in helping Dentsu Group and Dentsu International recover their performance and build a strong foundation for the future.
“The transition to the global ‘One Management Team’ structure is an on-going effort to realise the ‘comprehensive review’ and ‘business transformation’ of the entire group that we have been promoting since 2020.
“I am confident this will accelerate the group’s business growth and further enhance our corporate value. Making this a reality will require the close cooperation of the 67,000 employees across our global team.”
