CLOSE-UP: NEWSMAKER/WILLIAM ECCLESHARE - Ad stalwart returns to the industry he knows best. William Eccleshare has a hard task marrying Y&R's networks.(Brief Article)

When the news broke that William Eccleshare is to leave McKinsey & Company to return to the advertising fold at Young & Rubicam, barely anyone batted an eyelid. The Soho grapevine has done its job well over the past year or so - making it no secret that the former Ammirati Puris Lintas chairman was interested in a return to the industry.

Eccleshare himself has done little to discourage such speculation. 'I have made no secret of the fact that I wanted to get back into adland, it's true,' he says. 'I had a huge learning experience but I had underestimated the culture change I would face. McKinsey is a much more serious-minded place than any agency I've worked in. In a sense it lacks the huge variety of types of people and problems that you get in the best agencies.'

He's also clear about one aspect he missed during his two years away.

'Don't underestimate the creative side,' he says with hindsight. 'It is the creative department that gives agencies their energy and personality.'

But Eccleshare is insistent that the experience of integrating brand and business strategy will be crucial to his new role as the chairman and chief executive of the Y&R/Wunderman Alliance in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

'He's always been very interested in broader business issues and the expanded communications area,' Miles Colebrook, the group president of J. Walter Thompson International, who first hired Eccleshare as a trainee, confirms.

Eccleshare spent 18 years at JWT, where he progressed to become the network's worldwide director of strategic planning. He then moved to APL, where, as the chief executive and then chairman, he oversaw some turbulent years, which included the loss of the pounds 40 million Rover account. He was among the senior redundancies made at APL after its merger with Lowe Howard-Spink in 1999, which saw Lowe's Paul Hammersley become chief executive.