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 The ongoing car-crash that is Saatchi & Saatchi MENA took another shrieking roll last week, when regional CEO Elias Ashkar quit the agency, after what can only be described as a troubled tenure.
A statement from Saatchi announced the resignation under the less-than-revealing heading of “First phase of Saatchi & Saatchi MENA restructuring complete as agency looks ahead to 2010”. Yep, it’s all good news down there at Saatchi, that’s for sure.
According to the statement, Ashkar bit the bullet to spend more time with his family – that venerable cliché of forced resignations the world over.
“At the end of the decade I sat down and reviewed my professional and personal objectives, and while I am very pleased with what has been achieved at Saatchi & Saatchi and with the expansion plans in progress, in my heart, after working around the world, travelling extensively for the past 35 years, I will now settle down in Switzerland with an option that will afford me and my family a more stable way of life,” said Ashkar in the statement.
“Last year alone, I spent over 270 nights in hotels away from home and it is now time for change,” he added.
In fairness, that sounds like an excellent reason for hanging up one’s hat – but speculation will remain that Ashkar was pushed, rather than jumping. (Our esteemed colleagues over at Campaign saw fit to put inverted commas around the word “resigned” when writing up the story.)
During his time at Saatchi since joining in October 2008, Ashkar oversaw the ousting
of long-serving, outspoken and rather popular creative head Ed Jones, the winning of the lucrative and high-profile contract for Dubai’s Metro project, and the sudden departure
of Saatchi’s Beirut and Amman joint-venture offices.
He also notably managed to cause a minor spat with JWT following publication of an interview in Media Week, in which Ashkar appeared to take credit for some of JWT’s achievements – prompting the management of that agency to write a rather stern letter to the magazine, making it clear that Ashkar had precisely nothing to do with anything.
We also hear that over the past few months, Ashkar and new-ish regional creative director Marc Lineveldt (late of Fortune Promoseven) had a spectacular falling-out, prompted by some silly incident or other (we were told, but we forgot), which resulted in the pair not speaking, according to the vicious-rumour mill.
Possibly not an ideal situation for an agency head and his top creative, but then what do we know?
In any case, Ashkar has apparently achieved what Saatchi set out for him to achieve, according to the agency’s EMEA head, Simon Francis.
“Elias came in to instigate the restructuring of Saatchi & Saatchi in the MENA region. Thanks to him, this initial phase is now complete and our strategic objectives have been fulfilled. I want to personally thank Elias for his tremendous contribution to the region,” said Francis in the Saatchi statement.
“Under his leadership the agency has gone from strength to strength and all of us at Saatchi & Saatchi wish him the very best for the future. We are now in an excellent position to move forward to the next phase,” he added.
Saatchi has yet to pick a new chief, but in the meantime will be headed up by a triumvirate of Lineveldt, regional CFO Kristine Varma and regional human interests director (huh?) Ben Roberts.
The last 12 months or so were definitely not the easiest in Saatchi’s Middle East history. With any luck, 2010 will bring better fortunes for the agency.
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