Media Headliner: Universal McCann's nice guy faces testing time.(Graham Duff)

Graham Duff's job as the network's EMEA president is about the biggest challenge he could have landed.

Graham Duff likes a challenge. Everyone who knows him agrees it's so. And, indeed, it's the first thing he says when he's asked what convinced him to take up his new appointment, announced last week. (That and the fact he'll be able to walk to work, which, he says, not entirely flippantly, was the clinching factor.)

As of this week, he is Universal McCann's new president for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. So, no, he's not kidding. There are challenges and there are challenges. This one is about the biggest he could have landed.

Let's start with the fact that Universal McCann is, of course, an Interpublic network. IPG is an organisation whose internal troubles have exposed its accounting procedures to extreme scrutiny; which, in turn, has forced it to become the most transparent advertising group there is. In short, it has ripped up old business models.

Consequently, the group has less room to manoeuvre than its more opaque rivals, Which, arguably, makes life more difficult for its media agencies.

That's before you take into consideration that IPG is currently restructuring its two media agency brands - Universal and Initiative - to make them work more efficiently together under the evolving IPG Media umbrella.

Duff will have to move extremely quickly to assess which of his new network of lieutenants are up to the task ahead. That won't be easy for him, given the fact that he has no experience of media cultures outside of the UK.