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Agency Havas merges creative and media businesses; combines London offices

James Wright; Lucy Handley, special to CNBC
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Havas signed the lease for its new office at St Pancras Square in 2014
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Communications business Havas Group has got rid of two of its divisions, creative and media, in a bid to focus more on clients.

Instead of having separate media and creative groups, it will organize itself under regional chairs, covering the U.K., Spain, France, North America, Latin America and Asia Pacific.

"We used to be network-centric, organized by agencies, and we will completely change to be the first group at being client-centric and regionally organized, so at the end you will see more and more the natural border between the agencies disappearing more and more to move to a much more coherent group," Havas Group Chief Executive Yannick Bolloré told CNBC.com.

Havas has a new home
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Havas has a new home

"In the past, creative and media were together; 20 years ago [they] split, all over the industry, creative on one side, media on the other side. Today, we realize because of the digital platforms we needed to transcend this former differentiation and to reunify creativity and media."

Havas has also combined several London offices into one European headquarters in the city's Kings Cross area, close to Google's U.K. building and art college Central Saint Martins.

Asked whether it is possible for large companies to foster creativity, Bolloré said:

"I don't really think creativity is a question of scale, I think creativity is more a question of first having the right people, and two having them in the right environment.

"And I really believe that having them in this new home in this very place, at the centre of the new vibration of cool London, between Central St Martin's, between Google, between some great news companies is really important and meaningful to our people and the belief that this new ecosystem will enable them to have even better creativity."

Havas operates in around 100 countries and employs 20,000 people.

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