In an interview with British broadsheet the Daily Telegraph, Havas chief executive David Jones has spoken candidly on Europe's economic recovery and his take on the Publicis-Omnicom super-merger.

With 15,000 global employees and revenues €1.4 billion, Havas are among the giants of global media and advertising. But even they are not without concerns - the Eurozone is still a problem patch compared to the rapidly-expanding BRIC territories, and the recent $35 mega-merger between rival French agency Publicis Groupe and Americans Omnicom adds to the foreboding facing the deposed WPP and Havas.

But the 46-year-old chief executive isn't overly concerned, seeing cause for optimism and green shoots of recovery.

“It’s obviously been a tougher environment,” he says. “But if you look at all the big players there was only one year when the industry was in decline. The growth has been there every other year, even if it’s not been particularly dynamic. We delivered record profits for the first six months and our share price has hit a 14-year high, so it suggests the markets believe that Europe is not a problem any more.”

Jones went on to question company size, suggesting Havas - who are no small fry - are ideally positioned to provide a service to clients that perhaps larger agencies cannot deliver.

“In today’s world in our industry you need to be a global company, but there is a size and scale at which you become too big to change,” Jones told the Telegraph.

“My single biggest focus is digitising our business globally. That is number one because it is very easy to grow in digital and slow [down] in traditional advertising. But we need to be able to change faster. When I joined Havas a little over a decade ago, the only phone anyone had was a Nokia, the computer company people were writing books about was Dell and the only internet brand that really mattered to us was Yahoo!.

“My whole focus is to get us to act like a smaller, more entrepreneurial, more dynamic, more agile business, not a bigger one.”

Jones went on to (again) query the motives of the Publicis-Omnicom merger, encompassing 130,000 global staff and representing rival brands under one umbrella - such as Apple and Samsung, and PepsiCo and Coca-Cola. Jones believes clients will fall away from the new media monolith for a more diverse, tailored service.

“Publicis has been sold to the Americans but nobody has worked it out yet,” he said.

“It was orchestrated and happened in Paris so it looked like the French had the upper hand, but in two years the power will all be in New York. Do I think it will be a disaster? Not at all, but there will be talent and clients dropping out so there are opportunities for the rest of us, too.”

So where does Havas see the opportunities for growth? Jones pinpoints emerging social tech, again following Yahoo! and Google's example.

“People might say I’m just jealous, but I say, 'No, if I had that kind of money I’d be looking to buy something like Instagram or Twitter or Tumblr because I think that is where the game is changing.”