EDITORIAL: A watershed time for supergroups?

When the world's agency networks began consolidating under a single holding company, a senior Procter & Gamble executive posed the question: 'What's in these mega mergers for clients?' Almost two decades on, with Interpublic mired in financial scandal, those same multinational advertisers are entitled to claim that they still haven't had a satisfactory answer.

For many clients, the global communications supergroups have always seemed to serve the interests of those who set them up better than the advertisers.

One wonders what those clients are to make of the goings-on at Interpublic.

Investigations into allegations that bosses put improper pressure on managers to meet budgets. A Securities and Exchange Commission probe Boardroom oustings and demotion for the chairman.

The Interpublic affair will serve to confirm to clients how self-obsessed the groups have become. Cynics will argue that such groups have never really justified themselves beyond the major reason for their birth - to hang on to profitable accounts that previously had to be cut loose because of conflict. Since then, the supergroups have benefited from economies of scale but have often shown a greater preoccupation in appeasing shareholders than ...