Mindshare appoints Peter Diermayr as managing director in Singapore; deputy leader Bharad Ramesh leaves

Diermayr replaces Sony Wong, the agency’s former chief who left in December last year. The Singapore operations was then under the leadership of James Chadwick, CEO of GroupM Singapore CEO, and Ramesh.

Diermayr, who has been a client leader in Mindshare’s regional team since 2008, will now continue to drive the agency's leadership position in the local market and roll out new services for clients, especially in the areas of digital, content, activation and analytics. He reports directly to Chadwick and Ashutosh Srivastava, Mindshare Asia-Pacific’s leader.

Since arriving in Singapore as regional account director for Wunderman Asia-Pacific in 2000, Diermayr has held various management roles in WPP companies, and is slated to bring fresh expertise to the agency in the fields of relationship and digital marketing.

Diermayr said: "I'm absolutely delighted about this new role, and I can't think of a more exciting challenge than steering the agency into the next decade of growth. Having worked with the Mindshare Singapore team of directors for the past 18 months, I feel honoured to join and lead them, and I know we can achieve great things together, for our clients and for all the talent in the agency."

Chadwick added: "Peter's the perfect guy for this role. He has an Austrian accent like Arnold Schwarzenegger, and in many ways he shares the same determination in business as Arnie in some of his films. But he also has a very gentle way of dealing with people and complex marketing challenges. He brings a whole new world of expertise into the agency and he's committed to Singapore for the long term. Our clients and our people are going to love working with him."

Separately, Ramesh is set to leave Mindshare after almost six years with the firm. He was previously national tactical planning director at Mindshare China and moved to its Singapore office in August 2007.

Ramesh has overseen some of the agency’s biggest accounts including Aviva, GSK and StarHub. He also oversaw the development of innovation and products at the agency while expanding its trading partnership network.