Channel 4's outgoing advertising and marketing chief is the main candidate to turn out to be the subsequent boss of M&C Saatchi Group, the London-listed promoting company.

Sky News has learnt that Zaid Al-Qassab, whose exit from the state-owned broadcaster was introduced final month, is near agreeing to turn out to be M&C Saatchi's new chief government.

An promoting trade supply stated on Wednesday that Mr Al-Qassab had seen off competitors from rival candidates in current weeks, with an announcement potential inside days.

Mr Al-Qassab has labored for Channel 4, which lately confirmed plans to chop a whole bunch of jobs because it grapples with a pointy downturn in advert spending, since 2019.

Prior to that, he labored for BT Group.

If confirmed, Mr Al-Qassab will substitute Moray MacLennan, who had labored for M&C because it was based in 1995 and whose departure was introduced final July.

The announcement of his exit got here simply weeks after Zillah Byng-Thorne, the previous boss of The Week's writer, Future, joined M&C as chairman.

She has been performing as government chair since Mr MacLennan left.

M&C is among the best-known names in Britain's promoting trade, having been fashioned by the Saatchi brothers - Maurice and Charles - after they left Saatchi & Saatchi.

The latter agency nonetheless carries their title and is owned by Paris-based Publicis Groupe.

M&C has endured plenty of challenges in recent times, together with monetary reporting points and the exit of different co-founders together with David Kershaw and Bill Muirhead.

They lately purchased shares within the firm in an expression of confidence in Ms Byng-Thorne.

Its companies lengthen nicely past conventional promoting, encompassing sports activities sponsorship broking and activation, digital and social media advertising and marketing and expertise administration.

The company lately secured one in every of Britain's most outstanding promoting mandates when it was appointed by the Treasury to create a marketing campaign designed to influence hundreds of thousands of Britons to purchase a part of the federal government's 36% stake in NatWest Group.

In 2022, M&C was on the centre of a bidding battle involving the software program entrepreneur Vin Murria and Next Fifteen Communications, one other London-listed firm.

M&C handles campaigns for scores of blue-chip shoppers, together with Heineken and Barclays.

The authorities can also be already a giant consumer of the group, which produces work for the NHS and plenty of Whitehall departments.

On Wednesday, shares in M&C closed at 176p, giving it a market capitalisation of round £217m.

The inventory has slipped by 9% over the past yr.

A spokesman for the corporate declined to touch upon Wednesday night.