Chapter 129\ The mirror begins to crack

As the conflicts amongst Intermarkets’ second generation of leaders floated to the surface, the third generation of officers began to gang together and share a different kind of learning.

The general manager of Intermarkets Kuwait closed the door of his office during one of my market visits and whispered that he was in the process of firing his executive creative director, David Forsdike. An old-timer at the Kuwait agency, Forsdike had been hired by Youssef Habbab and was one of the few employees who had stayed in Kuwait during Saddam Hussein’s invasion. David had been a pillar of Intermarkets Kuwait, and I was greatly surprised to hear that his boss was planning to fire him.

When asked about the reason of this extreme decision, the general manager tried to avoid providing me with a clear response. However, when I insisted, he said that David was plotting against the agency. This made me nervously pressure for facts. He locked the door of his office and opened the drawer of his desk, pulling out a small tape recorder. When he played it, the voice of David could be heard having an intimate chat with his wife. The stop button was instantly pressed, and the tape fast forwarded. In this split second, I became nauseous at the thought of our general managers electronically eavesdropping on the private conversations of their staff. I was then asked to listen to the part of the tape that supported his claims of a plot. I was so disturbed that I refused to listen and insisted on knowing why he thought that what he was doing was professionally and morally acceptable. His cold response caused a further shock when he innocently said that he had learned this from his colleague, the general manager of the Dubai agency, who over the years had been keeping track of all the Dubai agency’s secrets.

On the flight back to Dubai, I realized that this ugly experience was helping me to unravel a secret that had been haunting me for the past two years. That secret being the mysterious reason that had catapulted the general manager of Dubai to this managerial position ahead of Nadim Sfeir, who had brought him into Intermarkets and had been responsible for initiating him into advertising.

Rachid Mteini, who presented himself as Intermarkets’ closest media friend, had put the manager of Intermarkets UAE in contact with Talal Makdissi, who had just transferred the headquarters of his Saudi-based ad agency, Team Advertising, to Abu Dhabi. Suddenly, our general manager resigned at Intermarkets, partnered with Talal and, not before long, convinced Makdissi to fire his cousin, Roger Sahyoun, who was managing Team Abu Dhabi, and moved its base to Dubai.

Soon after, ArabAd^[1] appeared with a cover story that carried the headline “Is this the dawn of acquisitions?”, featuring Makdissi telling of his journey to the throne of The Holding Group (THG), which he had just announced, and drawing parallels between himself and Martin Sorrell of WPP. Talal concluded his interview by citing his dream of growing THG to such a size that it would allow him to acquire Intermarkets.  

---

^[1] ArabAd magazine – August 1995 – From page 6 till 10