• WSJ (paid subscription required), Tuesday, December 13, 2005 12:17 PM

If there's one thing the struggling Interpublic Groups of Companies doesn't need right now, it's Frank Lowe. The maverick British adman who sold his eponymous agency to IPG in 1990 has resurfaced with a vengeance, and is placing a thorn directly in the side of his previous benefactors. Lowe recently announced he was starting a new agency in London and that its first client would be U.K. retailer Tesco, whose previous agency had been IPG's Lowe Worldwide. To make matters worse, the executive who handled the account, Paul Weinberger, also defected to Lowe's new, as yet-unnamed agency. It's all bad news for Interpublic, which in recent years has been struggling to stem a steady stream of client departures at Lowe Worldwide.

Lowe's connections with staff and clients at his old firm could make it even tougher for Interpublic management to turn around the agency. Martin Puris, a former Interpublic executive who sat on Interpublic's executive board, called Lowe's activities "another disturbing fracture in a series of fractures for Interpublic." Working in Lowe's favor as he attempts to hire executives is a perception among many people on Madison Avenue that the future is brighter at small, independent firms than agencies owned by giant companies.

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