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Some of our American friends are getting very bgnt out of shape by Publicis' concealment of the extent of job losses they created across the global empire.

BNET's Jim Edwards posted a shocking article today that announced Publicis CEO Maurice Levy outright lied about the status of layoffs across the French holding company. 

Maurice Levy did come clean with a new version of the truth. and he insists that recovery is just round the corner saying "We are leading new business on a worldwide basis," Levy said. "We have not yet benefited from the impact of new business and we will see that happening from now."

I don't know what he means by 'we are leading new business' – maybe we are doing biz dev?

And so I had a bit of fun tracking round the web and found where they have been keeping track of the layoffs – albeit mainly in US firms.

BNET's holding company layoff stats as of July 30:   

* WPP – up to 7,200    * Omnicom – 3,500    * Interpublic – 3,000    * Publicis – 1,800    * The Nielsen Co. – 1,600    * Aegis – 780

Anyone got stats for UK firms?

I found these articles on Campaign about redundancies.

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I got rather excited that the canny Daily Telegraph had signed up Sir Martin to blog for them from Davos. I thought we would get some real deep insight to get our teeth into…

Best so far is

My random poll indicates about two thirds concerned about the inadequacy of FED and US government action. One third agreeing. To be fair they’re probably damned if they do and damned if they don’t.

Nice…. Ok. But then I go to Brand Republic to check out setting up a blog (Thanks Andrew Japp) and frontpage headline is

Sorrell and Levy trade barbs over Google partnership.

And so why isn’t there anything on his blog about his point of view setting his side of the record straight…. that I would gladly get on an RSS feed for regular updates. What is currently there is frankly rather stale.

Here’s what they actually said

 ”What Publicis is doing represents a little bit of a concern that they didn’t get the technology right. I think Maurice is acknowledging a bit of an Achilles heel when it comes to technology.”

Levy hit back at his rival: “I’m sorry Martin said that — it’s really cheap, but it’s probably the result of his lack of understanding of technology.

“He’s a financier, I’m an engineer, and you can see the difference. I’m pleased with what we have done, and I’m sorry that my dear friend has not understood it.”

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