Close-Up: Live Issue - How can the new chief revive Havas?

With de Pouzilhac gone, which way should his replacement take the network, Claire Billings asks.

It's crunch time for the French advertising group Havas. The network, which trails its larger rivals with smaller revenues and a faltering proposition, is about to get a new chairman and chief executive following the resignation of the incumbent, Alain de Pouzilhac.

The job is expected to go to the chairman of TBWA\Worldwide, Jean-Marie Dru - a sufficiently powerful hiring to scotch talk of Havas becoming WPP's next accessory. With a new leader, a resolve to improve performance inevitably follows.

It's an unenviable task, even for someone of Dru's experience. In addition to addressing the instability created by the change of management and the events that led to it, one of the new chief executive's first problems will be to salvage the group's reputation. In fifth position, Havas offers little to make it a serious competitor to its larger rivals. Its revenues, pounds 1.03 billion in 2004, are dwarfed by even the smallest of the big groups - Publicis took pounds 2.7 billion. Against the biggest, Omnicom, which achieved pounds 5.1 billion, Havas looks puny.

Its vertically shaped, integrated offering, which it restructured in 2003, has not proved compelling, with its flagship global integrated client, Intel, exiting this year. The performances of all of its groups (Euro RSCG Worldwide, Arnold Worldwide and Media Planning Group) are patchy around the world, so it can't even trumpet a global offering to compete with Omnicom, WPP, Interpublic Group and Publicis. Compared with the micro-networks such as Bartle Bogle Hegarty and Mother, it doesn't boast consistently top-quality creative. So it's hard to see what attracts clients.

In its defence, it has netted some substantial new business in the past year. Euro RSCG captured Charles Schwab, worth pounds 52 million, and the pounds 54 million Jaguar account. Arnold won RadioShack, worth pounds 132 million. But although de Pouzilhac was leading a recovery, it did not prove enough to satisfy one shareholder in particular.

Vincent Bollore's growing influence and investment in Havas troubled de Pouzilhac in the year leading to his resignation. At first, he welcomed Bollore, but the two began to clash over the way the company should be run. In particular, Bollore opposed de Pouzilhac's crusade to buy Grey Worldwide, which was ultimately snared by WPP. As Bollore failed to offer an alternative strategy, de Pouzilhac became wary and fought, unsuccessfully, to keep Bollore from getting representation on the board.