The early money has been on OMG’s investment boss Kristiaan Kroon to take the helm of the group since October when Peter Horgan officially flagged his intent to leave after more than a decade as CEO. 

Market conjecture in the past week has been heating up on the probability that Kroon will get the nod from New York headquarters to take over from Horgan – an official announcement is said to be imminent, perhaps days.

Horgan and Kroon would not comment on the speculation but Horgan told Mi3 in October that a global search for his successor was underway but ultimately the nature of the Australian market and “relationships” meant a local appointment was probable. 

“I don’t want to contaminate the process – they will look globally –  but we’re aware it’s tough to parachute someone into this market which is heavily invested in relationships,” he said. “The industry track record of international fly-ins has not been great.”

Kroon has presided over the biggest pool of media budgets in the country for a number of years although that supremacy is being challenged by GroupM under Horgan’s one-time successor, Aimee Buchanan, who left as OMD CEO to run the WPP media unit in July 2021.

As investment boss Kroon has been the most active and vocal among his holdco peers in taking positions and making calls on key industry issues, trends and transparency – he was the earliest to call out Netflix’s spluttering Australian ad tier launch and is probably the most versed in the implications to industry from a raft of regulatory reforms coming at brands, media and tech, including privacy, social media and media bargaining code street fights.  

Kroon was behind OMG’s submission to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s (ACCC) inquiry into Digital Advertising Services in 2021. OMG was the only holdco to make a full and complete submission to the inquiry – rivals such as Publicis, WPP, IPG and Dentsu sidestepped most of the contentious areas of transparency in media and adtech the ACCC was probing. 

“In the Interim Report we sought feedback from stakeholders about the potential conflicts that arise and whether it was leading to problems for advertisers,” the ACCC said in its 2021 Final Report on Digital Advertising Services on media agencies. “We have had limited engagement from industry on these issues.”

Kroon has also been on a sustained remit creep at OMG with a number of core divisions reporting into him beyond his investment role. 

Just as official news on Kroon's new gig is impending, so is Horgan's next role. With "fire still in my belly", as he told Mi3 in October, Horgan said he'd lift the wraps on that venture "before Christmas".