The themes are surprisingly familiar, revealing parallels with contemporary architect's battles with clients' conflicting tastes, the process of dumbing down designs and "value engineering", as well as fancifully Photoshopped depictions of completed buildings that bear little relation to built reality.
"But there were some obstacles regarding the nature of the deal, organizational problems and client conflicts".
A stumbling block for any deal is the issue of client conflicts, Mr. Thomas said.
Getting all 570 partners (3,100 lawyers total) to agree on compensation, partnership issues and client conflicts was sticky.
Similarly, Michael J. Russell Jr., an analyst at Morgan Stanley, said he wondered whether there might still be client conflicts despite Mr. Cella's best efforts.
It has been kept separate from the merged agency, Lowe Lintas & Partners Worldwide, because of client conflicts, and reports to Interpublic through another agency, the McCann-Erickson Wofldwide Advertheing division of the McCann-Erickson World Group.
Mr Laskawy, who last month was singing the praises of staying solo, will face some difficult questions from his firm's partners.Double entriesOther big service-industry mergers have been damaged by "client conflicts".
"Creativity is otherwise difficult to manage as you get big," says Sir Martin Sorrell, head of WPP.Furthermore, there are limits to how far agencies can be merged, because of client conflicts.
Larger rivals like the Interpublic Group of Companies, the Omnicom Group and the WPP Group operate two or three global networks, which maximize growth opportunities by minimizing the potential for client conflicts.
A tie-up between WPP and Y.& R. is more compelling than a deal with Publicis, an executive close to Y.& R. said, because both WPP and Y.& R. serve some of the same clients -- like Ford, Kraft, Mattel and Sears -- and do not have major client conflicts.
