According to a report, employees will either be told they are moving to a WPP Group agency or that there is no role for them at the moment.
Hearn is said to have emailed employees in the New York office to attend a meeting yesterday afternoon, where everyone would find out how the WPP acquisition affected them personally.
The news came on the same day that Havas announced it would be slashing 850 jobs globally as part of a massive reorganisation of the company.
The saga about the sale of Cordiant to WPP kept the business pages full over the spring, before shareholders approved a £266m deal in July. Cordiant ended up in serious financial trouble after a string of client losses at Bates during the last two years, including Allied Domecq, Hyundai and Wendy's, the US burger chain.
In the UK, Bates is being integrated into the Red Cell network and J Walter Thompson. Fifteen Bates offices in Scandinavia, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria and Eastern Europe are also to be subsumed into Red Cell.
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