In what now appears to many as a sweeping purge of the network's APAC media executives, we now know that Dentsu Aegis Network Media APAC chairman Sean O'Brien has exited the company, along with DAN's APAC chief client officer Kristian Barnes and the president of DAN's media innovation and investment arm, Amplifi Asia-Pacific, Sunil Yadav.
The departures occurred as part of a major restructuring at DAN, first announced in January, which affected performance agency iProspect, Amplifi, and saw media agencies Carat, Dentsu X and Vizeum instead form three main regional working groups headed from Singapore. Underscoring the reorganisation were industry undercurrents which saw business shift away from regional remits to global and local ones.
The major executive departures that followed therefore came at the regional level. In addition to his chairman of media role, O'Brien was CEO of Posterscope and MKTG Asia-Pacific. He had also served as APAC CEO of Carat, first in full capacity and last year on an interim basis. Yadav was DAN's head of investment management before leading Amplifi in the region. Barnes, meanwhile, was APAC CEO of Vizeum before moving over to lead DAN's regional client relationships in 2017.
Campaign now understands that most if not all of the high-level departures at Dentsu Aegis APAC have now been reported.
In recent weeks, Campaign has also reported that North Asia CEO Rob Hughes and Southeast Asia CEO Phil Teeman were also out, following last week's news that Susana Tsui, CEO of DAN China, would step down.
Campaign has also reported that Jonathan Chadwick, initially given the role of leading the new One Singapore Media Group will be returning to Australia for personal reasons.
Dentsu Aegis did not provide an official statement or comments on any of the individual departures.
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