Bailout Fallout

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LOS ANGELES If there were any doubts about whether the tremors from Wall Street would spread uptown to Madison Avenue, the events of last week dispelled them.

Banking failures and buyouts involving Washington Mutual and Wachovia sparked wildly volatile developments involving five ad agencies and nearly $300 million in combined ad expenditures.

Last Monday, JPMorgan Chase stopped an old-fashioned run on Washington Mutual with a takeover. Almost immediately, the reskinning of the latter’s Web site began (branches are to follow with new signage), signaling the beginning of the end of a WaMu rebranding effort began just months ago by Omnicom Group’s TBWA\Chiat\Day, Playa del Rey, Calif.,

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