French advertising firm Publicis names WPP's Ikiler as EMEA COO

(Reuters) - Publicis has appointed WPP's Demet Ikiler as its chief operating officer for Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA), the French advertising agency said on Monday.

Ikiler, who joins after more than two decades at Britain's ad group WPP, will partner with Loris Nold, the chief executive officer of Publicis' EMEA unit, to accelerate growth, strengthen collaboration and scale expertise across the region, Publicis said in a statement.

"I have been hoping to partner with (Ikiler) for years and cannot envisage a better way to take on our greater ambition for the EMEA region," Nold said in a statement, while Ikiler expressed how honoured she was to join the French group.

Prior to WPP, where she was CEO of GroupM EMEA and WPP country chair, Ikiler worked at Zenith and Saatchi & Saatchi.

In the nine months to the end of September 2022, Publicis' EMEA segments generated revenue of 2.33 billion euros ($2.53 billion), accounting for roughly 25.6% of the period's total revenues of 9.11 billion euros.

($1 = 0.9213 euros)

(Reporting by Dagmarah Mackos; editing by Jason Neely and Paul Simao)