Lau quits DDB after 16 years

Aaron Lau, DDB Asia's chairman and president and CEO for China, has resigned after 16 years with the network. Lau declined to comment on the reasons for his departure, but indicated he had been considering his future for some time. "This has nothing to do with Michael Birkin's (Omnicom's newly-installed Asia-Pacific head) arrival," Lau told Media. "If anything, his arrival made me want to stay longer." Lau was promoted to his current role in late 2003, ostensibly to create a more cohesive offer out of DDB's Asia operations. "With the old structure, fragmentation contributed to the agency becoming somewhat incohesive, but it is not as bad as people think," he said at the time of his promotion. Less than a year later, DDB promoted executive vice-president for Australia and New Zealand John Zeigler, to president and CEO of Asia-Pacific, a new post created to invigorate business in Asia. This week, Zeigler promoted Dick van Motman, its Singapore-based regional head of international accounts, as the network's first-ever China CEO, and charged him with achieving "quick, significant" results in China.