Media can exclusively reveal that Y&R Singapore has retrenched about six people in the wake of its loss of the Singapore Tourism Board creative account. Tanuj Philip (pictured), CEO of Y&R Group Singapore said: “Since last year, we have been reinventing Y&R for the future. Our parting with STB has accelerated this process. While there have unfortunately been some redundancies, which represents five per cent of our headcount, we are taking the opportunity to continue re-engineering our staff profile to achieve a better fit with our plans by investing in high growth areas such as digital."
Saatchi & Saatchi has also made layoffs, with reports suggesting it has made six redundancies. A Saatchi & Saatchi spokesperson confirmed the news. “The reality is we are going though an economic crisis so when marketing budgets get reduced, this has an impact to business. We have done our best to minimise this, but still had to let several people go. Like many businesses, we will continue to monitor this closely throughout 2009.”
In addition to layoffs, reports suggest several agencies are scaling back manpower further by reducing the number of workers employed on a contract basis.
