Jeffrey Yu resigns from Publicis Greater China for consultant role

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.