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With a less-than-satisfactory marriage behind it and an identity crisis yet to be resolved, it's little wonder that Lowe is seen as Interpublic's problem child.

Nor is it much of a surprise that the communications supergroup is signalling a determination to take its underperforming offspring in hand and make the most of its virtues.

Jerry Judge, Lowe's wise-cracking worldwide chief executive, looks set to be cast aside as IPG seeks a firmer brand of leadership. Meanwhile, Lowe's centre of gravity is to return from New York to London.

That Lowe needs a radical remedy is beyond question. The network has been haemorrhaging business as well as talented people who no longer find it a pleasant environment. "It's like working for the Mafia," a recently departed senior staffer laments. "You know you're going to get whacked. It's just a question of when."

To many onlookers, Lowe's preoccupation with creative perfection - however long the process takes - is out of synch with a fast-moving communications world in which clients not only need solutions quickly but want to work in a more collaborative way.

This hasn't been helped by heavily bureaucratic systems that have been allowed to proliferate in recent years. Indeed, Matthew Bull, the London agency's chief executive and a key figure in the rebuilding plan, has made the elimination of process a high priority.

How did it come to this? How did a network whose showpiece London operation was named ±±¾©Èü³µpk10's Agency of the Year a mere three years ago lose its way?

Poor direction and a lack of decision-making at the most senior level is cited as one reason. "Is Lowe an international network or a boutique?" a former senior staffer asks. "We were never sure because nobody told us."

Another is the IPG-arranged merger in 1999 of the creatively potent Lowe & Partners with the staid and conservative Ammirati Puris Lintas. The resultant problems of force-fitting two disparate cultures continue to reverberate.

The marriage threw Lowe people in front of advertisers whose urgency they couldn't understand. Turf wars broke out and clients were dismayed at the way the merged agency seemed obsessed with itself rather than giving them what they wanted.

"In reality, nothing much changed," an ex-network manager says. "Lintas people continued running their own pieces of business with a smattering of Lowe people scuttling over the top of them."

The steady migration of business by Unilever, once the Lintas bedrock client, and General Motors were the outward manifestations of inner problems.

However, it was this year's loss of the massive HSBC account to WPP that seemed to encapsulate Lowe's failure to appreciate the big picture.

Former network executives still rue the fact that nobody understood the implications of Draft Worldwide, Lowe's direct stablemate, taking on the $180 million Bank of America account little more than a year before HSBC called a review.

"HSBC may have been small in the US but Lowe forgot what an acquisitive beast it was," an ex-network manager says of the world's second-largest financial services company. "HSBC felt slighted."

"We were naive," another admits. "We never got back to HSBC quickly enough with solutions. We thought that if we just kept doing good work we'd be OK."

With HSBC having joined Braun (£40 million) and Verizon Wireless (£170 million) on the list of Lowe defectors, Judge's successor will have some tough calls to make in order to reconstruct the network around its core assets.

Unable to match the scale of its global rivals, the likelihood is that Lowe will become a creatively led micro-network similar to Bartle Bogle Hegarty and Wieden & Kennedy.

Insiders suggest it could be based on a "superstars and superstores" plan, which has twice been mooted in recent times but failed to overcome Judge's opposition.

The plan envisages reducing the Lowe global operation from 80-plus agencies to no more than 20 and the creation of a "two-speed" network. It's the kind of middle ground WPP's Red Cell is attempting to occupy.

Some agencies would aim for "superstar" status by attracting world-class talent to produce world-class work. The "superstores" brief would be to establish them strongly in their local markets and to develop a breadth of marketing services to capture the kind of below-the-line business for which Lowe is currently unequipped.

Moreover, such a restructure is not thought likely to unsettle any other large clients. Lowe's work for Nestle is mainly on local brands, Johnson & Johnson is creatively undemanding and Unilever's burgeoning relationship with BBH suggests it would support Lowe's reincarnation as a micro-network.

Whether or not a return of the Lowe's headquarters to London - long desired by the network's patriarch, Sir Frank Lowe - will prove significant is a moot point. Some believe it's two years too late and would have made more sense when Lowe's top five multinational clients did most of their business in Europe. What's more, there's an 800-strong New York agency still needing to be managed.

What's agreed is that Lowe's problems won't respond to a quick fix but will be eased by an infusion of new business. This may prove hard until the network can convince prospects that its standards of client service match its creativity. "Lowe is still a great brand," a former Lowe agency chief remarks. "The trouble is that nobody is buying it anymore."