Jeffrey Yu resigns from Publicis Greater China for consultant role

GREATER CHINA - Jeffrey Yu, who joined Publicis as the Greater China CEO in February 2012, has resigned from the agency but will continue to work as a consultant to key clients across Asia, Campaign Asia-Pacific has confirmed.

Jeffrey Yu

Yu made the decision earlier this week, he told Campaign Asia-Pacific this afternoon. Yu said he is not cutting ties with Publicis but wants to maintain market credibility and connections with many colleagues and clients.

There is no Greater China CEO replacement at this stage. The agency said global clients will fall under the responsibility of Loris Nold, APAC CEO, based in Singapore. Business units in Greater China will report directly to Publicis headquarters in France. 

“Since I took over the Publicis Greater China CEO role from Laurie Kwong just over two years ago, my main task was to help the restructuring of the Greater China teams, including getting a new MD for the Beijing office, a new CEO for Betterway, making the Hong Kong and Guangzhou offices work closer, and hiring Iris Lo to lead Red Lion and clean up the mess,” Yu said. "Now the restructuring has completed. I have now moved the mountains. As the French people like to do things their way, I will let them to grow the grass.”

Reported in November 2013, Publicis Groupe has reached an out-of-court financial settlement with the co-founder of its field-marketing agency Betterway after a drawn-out corruption probe that began when internal Publicis auditors raided the agency’s offices in February 2012.

 

Yu spoke to Campaign that this decision was made earlier this week. “Since I took over the Publicis Greater China CEO role from Laurie Kwong just over two years ago, my main task was to help the restructuring of the Greater China teams, including getting a new MD for Beijing office, a new CEO for Betterway, make Hong Kong and Guangzhou office to work closer, and hiring Iris Lo to lead Red Lion and clean up the mess.”

“Now the restructuring have completed,” he added “I have now moved the mountains, as the French people like to do things their ways, I let them to grow the grass.”

I am not cutting my ties with Publics, and still want to maintain my market credibility and ties with lots of good colleagues and clients, as I still working closely with the clients, he said.

Asked how many clients he would become a consultant to? Yu said that have yet to be defined but at least would be more than one.

There is no Greater China CEO replacement in place at this stage.

Reported in November 2013, Publicis Groupe has reached an out-of-court financial settlement with the co-founder of its field-marketing agency Betterway after a drawn-out corruption probe that began when internal Publicis auditors raided the agency’s offices in February 2012.

| greater china , Publicis