In an unprecedented move, advertising and media giants Publicis Groupe of France and Omnicom of America have announced plans for a $35bn merger that will leapfrog WPP as the world's largest agency.

Inferior to Sir Martin Sorrell's WPP for the past four years, the combination of the world's second largest marketing group, Omnicom, with third placed Publicis will create a multinational conglomerate with £15bn of revenues and a stock market value of $35bn.

With the deal signed at the Champs-Élysées overlooking the Arc de Triomphe, the new PublicisOmnicom agency will be dual-headquartered in New York and Paris. Publicis chief executive Maurice Lévy and his opposite number at Omnicom John Wren will split duties as co-CEOs for 30 months, before Lévy, 71, will relinquish and become chairman and Wren, 60, will become sole CEO.



The media monolith will now comprise of 130,000 employees, with a client portfolio of global brands such as PepsiCo, Apple, Coca-Cola and Samsung and be registered in the 'neutral' territory of the Netherlands.



 "This is a new company for a new world,"  said Maurice Lévy. "It will be able to face the exponential development of new Internet giants like Facebook and Google, changing consumer behaviour, the explosion of big data, as well as handle the blurring of roles of all the players in the market.


"The communication and marketing landscape has undergone dramatic changes in recent years including the exponential development of new media giants, the explosion of big data, blurring the roles of all players … John and I have conceived this merger to benefit our clients by bringing together the most comprehensive offering of analogue and digital services."

On casually proposing the merger at a social function six months ago, Lévy reflected: "I said it almost as a joke, but then once we each went back and reflected, it didn't seem so crazy."