What were they thinking in the first place? Now that Publicis Groupe and Omnicom have called off their $35 billion merger, per sources, the differences between the two companies as they attempted to combine their operations seem more glaring than any common vision of “equals” they trumpeted back in July. After the flourish in Paris of signing off on a doomed transaction, the relationship between Publicis CEO Maurice Levy and Omnicom counterpart John Wren quickly soured amid a power struggle for control and consensus upon management structure. In recent months, it was a question of not if, but when, the two companies would call off the deal. Publicly, the merger has taken farcical turns. While Publicis’s Levy was telling analysts there were no tax issues beyond the usual French oversight, Omnicom’s Wren was advising investors that U.K. tax residency problems could be a dealbreaker for the Netherlands headquartered Publicis Omnicom Group. Then on April 29, Le Monde, France’s newspaper of record, published an incendiary article calling the transaction a Publicis takeover of its much larger American counterpart, in all but name. Many observers believed both companies would pull the plug in mid-June after the Chinese regulatory approvals did not come through, as widely expected, and would provide a face-saving out for the proposed merger. Now it remains to see what the industry’s most high-profile, expensive failed transaction will do to the reputations of the companies’ two chief executives in the twilight of the careers who are considering their own legacies.