• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, April 1, 2005

David Verklin whose deft stewardship of Carat Americas has made him a key player within parent Aegis Group's sprawling media empire, Thursday received nearly a million share grants and options of Aegis stock bringing such holdings into the millions.

Under the most recent grant, Verklin and two other top Aegis executives - CFO Jeremy Hicks and Aegis Research (Synovate) CEO Adrian Chedore - were awarded new options and "conditional shares" for "nil consideration.

Verklin was granted 371,000 new options exercisable between March 31, 2008 and March 30, 2015 at $192.13. Aegis shares were trading at $193.05 Friday morning. The grant brings Verklin's Aegis options total to 6,908,552.

Separately, the Aegis board granted Verklin 450,000 conditional share awards under a company performance plan. That grant brings Verklin's conditional share total to 1,241,000.

In addition to running Carat Americas, Verklin oversees Marketing Management Analytics, a pioneer in the field of marketing mix modeling. He led Carat's team in the win of Procter & Gamble's communications planning account in 2004 and has been on a new business tear in the past several months, though several top Carat executives have recently departed. Carat currently is undergoing a high-level executive search to replace Charlie Rutman who left as president of Carat USA and becomes CEO of Havas' MPG North America unit on Monday.