The "Silver Scalpel" told Britain’s Guardian that he loathes making high-profile announcements (to boost stock price?) of future "redundancies" like the hatchet men at Martin Sorrell's WPP and John Wren's Omnicom do. [Interpublic CEO Michael Roth joined the fun today, revealing in an SEC filing that "workforce reductions will contribute to further declines in base salaries and benefits through the remainder of the year." Roth has already pruned 4,100 souls, which represented nine percent of IPG's staff, since Q4 '08.]
Suave and sophisticated Maurice believes his staff prefers the French way of doing things.
“Separating us from all the other agencies is that we have absolutely no announcement of global or regional cuts,” he told the Guardian. “We are more sensible. We are in the people business and don’t want to hurt people and we want to manage this in a less negative way.”
That’s a commendable sentiment, but small solace to the 1,800 people (four percent of total staff) that Maurice canned this year. A lost job is a lost job whether one knew it was coming or not.
