FCB will cease to exist in the Australian market after the multi-national agency agreed to an affiliation with rising local independent AJF Partnership.
The deal will see AJF take on FCB's remaining clients and five of its staff with the affiliation beginning officially on August 4.
Neither AJF or FCB could confirm the number of redundancies although FCB's global website listed the agency as having 10 staff members.
FCB closed its Melbourne office (then branded as DraftFCB) in 2012 following the loss of the Honda account and operations were centralised in Sydney.
FCB has pursued affiliation as a business model in a number of other markets.
Bryan Crawford, chairman of FCB Australia and New Zealand, said the affiliation was the right move for the business.
“AJF Partnership is an excellent agency for an affiliation in Australia,” Crawford said.
“The combination of AJF’s creative effectiveness and extensive resources together with the highly-valued existing team at FCB Sydney provides our multi-national clients with additional services to help grow their businesses”.
Digby Richards, managing director at AJF Partnership Sydney, said: “We’re very honoured that the FCB network has chosen AJF Partnership to become an affiliate. We are excited about welcoming four great brands and a senior, experienced team into the business and helping them all grow”.
While AJF said four existing FCB clients would move across to the agency, it declined to name them.
Brands currently represented on FCB's Sydney website include Wattyl Paint, Nivea Men and Lindt.
FCB has endured a chequered history in the Australian market and one of its former CEO's said he was not surprised at the decision to roll the business into a new agency and that FCB's global management had not handled the Australian market well.
“I am saddened, but not at all surprised,” Colin Wilson Brown, the agency's former CEO, said. “They have been poor managers.”
He said the decision to hand the management of the business to AJF, which has had a strong run winning brands such as Target, iSelect, GM Holden and Officeworks, was a positive step.
FCB has consistently struggled to gain traction as a brand in Australia and in the early 1990s it shuttered its doors before re-emergeing in a takeover of successful local agency Magnus Nankervis and Curl in 1995.
The agency grew to more than 100 staff across Sydney and Melbourne before suffering from the impact of the loss of a number of multi-national accounts.
Richards said that the affiliation meant that AJF would retain its independence and there had not been any discussions about FCB parent Interpublic taking a stake in the agency.
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