16 staff are axed as part of Saatchi rationalisation

Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising has cut 16 jobs as part of wide-ranging measures to compensate for the loss of more than 150m of client business since January.

The job cuts will save 1m per year and form part of wider cuts across travel and entertainment, capital expenditure and creative service budgets.

The creative department at Charlotte Street appears most affected by the cuts. It has lost eight people, including group head Fergus Fleming.

The redundancies come on top of the estimated 30 people who have already quit this year.

“We’ve been looking at costs,” says Saatchi joint managing director Adam Crozier, “and have conducted a rigorous review. No more redundancies are planned.”

Crozier claims the agency has picked up 79m of billings since the start of the year, including 24m Comet business and work from Toyota and Carlsberg. He also claims losses in the UK stand at 100m, rather than the 177m calculated because of the worldwide nature of the British Airways/Qantas business previously co-ordinated from London.

The agency has lost BA, BT Global, Dixons, Gallaher Tobacco, Mars, Mirror Group Newspapers and Qantas since Maurice Saatchi resigned as group chairman in January to form M&C Saatchi.

– The Advertising Standards Authority has upheld complaints by Comet against Saatchi & Saat-chi. The complaints are about ads for former client Currys, part of the Dixons business before Dixons Stores moved it into M&C Saatchi (MW April 21).