LONDON — Giles Peddy, the corporate development SVP for EMEA at Lewis, is leaving the agency in October after more than seven years, PRovoke Media has learned.

Lewis’ EVP for Europe, Yvonne van Bokhoven, said Peddy was leaving “by mutual consent” and added: “We thank Giles for his contribution in the past seven years and wish him well for the future.”

Van Bokhoven said Peddy’s role would not be directly replaced, and his European business development responsibilities would be split between her and the senior teams in London and Europe.

Peddy joined Lewis in 2013 as group managing director in the UK, and was promoted into his current role in 2018. His responsibilities included the strategic operational development of the EMEA region, as well as being the global client relationship leader for a number of technology accounts, and leading global development of new products and services, as well as analytics and measurement.

Before joining Lewis, Peddy had spent seven years at Hotwire, latterly as deputy managing director, and also spent six years at Golin.

Peddy, who has not yet revealed his next move, told PRovoke Media: "I have had a great time at LEWIS over the last 7.5 years and am very proud of my achievements. I wish the team every success for the future."

Lewis currently has 24 offices around the world, with regional hubs in London, Munich, Singapore and San Francisco. Van Bokhoven told PRovoke Media that the agency had, like most in the industry, been hit by the Covid-19 pandemic, particularly by project delays in the travel, consumer and leisure sectors, but that other clients such as Deliveroo had upped budgets, and overall the agency was around 10% down on expected revenues.

One of the agency’s biggest account wins in lockdown was global cloud communications company Infobip, which appointed it as agency of record across Europe and Asia in May after a review.