New York, New York: why it's the city to be seen succeeding in.(Brief Article)

The boardrooms of the most powerful networks in the multinational advertising world might all be in Manhattan, but English accents are increasingly being heard there.

A quick survey of the business finds three London agency chief executives heading for big jobs across the Atlantic. Paul Hammersley, the chief executive of Lowe Lintas and veteran of a previous four-year stint with the agency in New York, is leaving London to become chief executive of the agency's New York office. Nick Brien is leaving Leo Burnett to take on a new, broad role within the Starcom MediaVest Group. And Andrew Robertson, Abbott Mead Vickers's chief executive, is leaping into the conglomerate's den with the biggest job of the three: chief executive of BBDO North America.

That the Brits are in danger of taking over Madison Avenue is an indication of several things. Most significantly it highlights the globalisation of the advertising business. Say what you like about some of the banal junk that sometimes passes for global advertising, but the business logic of standardising, integrating and transferring types of advertising across countries is irrefutable.

The cases of Hammersley, Brien and Robertson also point to the existence of a glass ceiling in UK agencies that,thanks partly to the size of the market here and partly to the way clients are organised, is encountered lower down than the US.

While the UK is usually the centre of a pan-European campaign from a co-ordination point of view, it is ...