GroupM reorganises APAC leadership structure, Ashutosh Srivastava vacates APAC CEO role

GroupM is reorganising its APAC leadership structure into four distinct market clusters, in which its APAC CEO Ashutosh Srivastava (pictured) will be vacating his role to explore new opportunities within WPP, as confirmed to MARKETING-INTERACTIVE.

The move comes as the agency is looking to simplify its business structure and to enable itself to move faster and be more aligned with its clients, who believe GroupM's APAC markets should be managed at a much more local level. The agency has also seen great success with this approach in other regions and a similar impact is expected in the APAC region.

Under the new restructuring, GroupM's APAC business will be operated as four market clusters going forward, including Greater China and North Asia (Korea and Japan), led by its China CEO Patrick Xu; South Asia, led by South Asia CEO Prasanth Kumar; Southeast Asia, led by Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam CEO Himanshu Shekhar; Australia New Zealand, led by Australia and New Zealand CEO Aimee Buchanan. 

Meanwhile, Srivastava will be exploring new opportunities within WPP. He will remain active in the business through the end of April to help ensure a smooth transition to this new model.

Commenting on the move, Christian Juhl, global CEO, GroupM, said: “Srivastava has been an exceptional leader for WPP and GroupM and a vital partner to our clients across APAC for more than two decades. We are deeply grateful for everything he has done to advance GroupM’s position as the leading media investment management group in the region and set our teams up for continued success.” 

Srivastava said: “It has been a privilege to help lead GroupM through a period of such rapid growth and transformation and consolidate our market leadership. Over the past three years, we have simplified the operating model and put in place a fabulous leadership team that is the envy of the industry; making it even easier for clients to access the best of the group and create market leading work that is recognised everywhere. With that work complete, I feel now is a good time for me to focus on other exciting developments in this dynamic and fast-growing region. I would like to wish our leadership team all the very best and have no doubt they will continue to take GroupM to new heights.”

Back in March, GroupM has introduced a back to news (BTN) initiative, a programme to support the re-investment of media budgets into credible news publishers who are advancing the practice of responsible journalism around the world.

Created in global partnership with media support nonprofit, Internews, BTN will provide GroupM clients with access to ad environments on vetted local, national, and international news sites. The BTN initiative is underpinned by Internews’ Ads for News initiative that helps brands and agencies reach engaged news audiences on over 10,000 trusted local news websites from more than 50 countries.

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