Havas Worldwide elevates 14-year veteran Levent Guenes to lead 9 markets and accelerate growth as chief executive officer in Southeast Asia
Havas Worldwide has promoted Levent Guenes to CEO Southeast Asia for the Havas Creative Group. In his new role Guenes will lead the group’s agencies across nine markets. The promotion from COO to CEO comes at a strategic time as Havas consolidates its position and continues to promote a new agency vision with a fully integrated and collaborative approach across the markets, sharing resources locally and regionally, while overcoming P&L limitations and delivering consistently high quality services for all its clients.
Guenes has been with Havas for a total of 14 years, from his early financial responsibilities in Germany and his increasingly operational responsibilities at the region’s headquarters in Hong Kong and Japan, evolving to a multi-asset management leader and more recently, becoming involved in driving business growth for Southeast Asia working alongside the region’s managing directors and his regional partners Sunny Hermano, Stefano Augello and Dr. VJ Yamat.
“This is an exciting announcement for Havas as we continue to expand our footprint and strengthen our teams and services in the region. Levent has and will continue to lend strategic value to the business with his hands-on management style,” said Juan Rocamora, Chairman of Havas Worldwide Asia Pacific. “He is a unique talent and fit for the CEO role which demonstrates the Havas model to leveraging diverse strengths to build a stronger network for our clients’ needs. With his ability to collaborate across disciplines with experts in all areas and to apply knowledge in areas of expertise other than his own, Levent is the prototype of leader for our industry’s future.”
“Havas continues to pioneer new thinking to achieve our objectives in delivering a meaningful and ‘Uncommon Sense’ approach for services to our clients. We will continue to focus on solutions that are right rather than obvious and 2015 will be a tremendous and eventful year of growth. We will continue to push the bar to new heights and challenge the status quo with our single P&L approach to support our markets with the best regional talents right at their clients’ doorsteps,” said Guenes.