Almost exactly a year after Omnicom and Interpublic Group announced their plans to merge into the world’s largest advertising agency, their combination is complete.
Following the deal’s Nov. 26 close, Omnicom on Monday outlined the structure of the newly combined company, including leaders appointed throughout “the new Omnicom.” Among them is Dana Maiman, who has been tapped to lead Omnicom Health.
As CEO of the agency’s health-focused arm, Maiman will oversee its healthcare professional and consumer, medical communications, patient engagement and managed markets divisions.
Meanwhile, also amid the combination, Omnicom plans to lay off around 4,000 employees across the entire organization, AdWeek reports.
Omnicom did not immediately respond to a Fierce Pharma Marketing request for comment on the layoffs.
Maiman takes on the top spot at Omnicom Health after holding the same title at Interpublic’s IPG Health since its creation in 2021. Before that, she was CEO and president of the FCB Health Network—which was ultimately merged with McCann Health to create IPG Health.
Just a few weeks after Omnicom and Interpublic first unveiled the acquisition plans last December, Matt McNally, then the CEO of Omnicom Health Group, announced he’d be stepping down, later surfacing as global CEO of Publicis Health. Another Omnicom Health exec followed a similar path soon after, as chief marketing officer Craig Romanok left in May and was named chief commercial officer at Publicis’ Digitas Health a month later.
Since McNally’s departure, Michael Larson had been serving as interim CEO of Omnicom Health; under the post-merger structure, Larson has been named CEO of diversified agency services, with Maiman among his direct reports.
The close of Omnicom’s $13.5 billion acquisition of Interpublic was nearly a year in the making, following antitrust reviews by regulators around the globe—the last of which came from the European Commission just last week.
The combined company now boasts annual revenues of more than $25 billion, per Omnicom, including billions in the realm of health and pharma.
The 4,000 layoffs are already in progress and join the approximately 3,000 employees each that Omnicom and Interpublic have shed throughout the last year.
The 10,000 cuts reportedly amount to about 8% of the two agencies’ combined 2024 headcount and are meant to fulfill the hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of “synergies” promised in the initial merger announcement last year, by reducing newly redundant and unnecessary positions, Omnicom CEO John Wren told AdWeek.