Well, Noreen at Adweek‘s trigger-finger was admittedly faster than ours at day’s end as she is indeed reporting what tipsters have been telling us since around 5-ish, that McCann Worldgroup CEO Nick Brien is no longer with the agency. As Adweek, George Parker and others have been buzzing about, Brien’s job status (along with Draftfcb boss Laurence Boschetto‘s) has been in doubt as of late, and recent comments made by Michael Roth, chairman/CEO of parent company IPG, didn’t really soothe matters. Brien had held his title as Worldgroup chairman/chief exec since April 2010 after serving as CEO of IPG’s Mediabrands.

Replacing Brien as McCann Worldgroup’s CEO is Harris Diamond, who most recently served as chairman/CEO of IPG’s Constituency Management Group. Says Roth in a statement, “Harris understands the business needs of global CEOs, across a range of industries. He has a proven track record of effectively managing a portfolio of agencies and growing the top line. He has created a strong culture of collaboration, which is increasingly key in a marketing landscape that requires integration of services. And he brings a deep knowledge of McCann in light of the alignment between Worldgroup and a number of the agencies within CMG, such as Weber Shandwick and FutureBrand.”

Along with Diamond’s appointment, IPG has given Luca Lindner and Gustavo Martinez, McCann Worldgroup president, Americas and Worldgroup president, Europe, respectively, more responsibilities with the former adding Middle East and Africa responsibilities (something he’s familiar with)and the latter, Asia-Pacific.

It seems like Luca Lindner‘s quickly climbing up the charts at McCann Worldgroup. Just four months after the IPG network appointed the president of the Middle Eastern, Latin American and African regions as co-prez of its Global Brands community, Lindner will now assume the new title of McCann Worldgroup, Americas, which we’ve been told is a new position.

As a result, Lindner’s handing over the African and Middle East reins to his Global Brands cohort Gustavo Martinez, who currently serves as president of McCann Worldgroup Europe. Lindner, who will continue to co-lead Global Brands, has been with McCann Worldgroup for nearly eight years, initially joining as regional director for Latin America/Caribbean in 2005. Prior to McCann, Lindner served as vice-chairman of Leo Burnett Europe and had stints at TBWA’s Paris and Rome offices early on in his career.

After promoting Pat Lafferty to COO of McCann Erickson North America last fall, McCann Worldgroup has finally found leadership to succeed the exec in the Global Brand community he established in 2011. Taking over as joint leaders of the GBC will be McCann Worldgroup Europe president Gustavo Martinez, who replaced Brett Gosper a year ago, and Luca Lindner, president of Worldgroup ops in Latin America, the Middle East and Africa. Both execs will maintain their current roles while also assuming the title of president, Global Brands.

The Global Brand group consists of the leaders of McCann Worldgroup’s global accounts including L’Oreal, MasterCard, Nestle and Coca-Cola. The added responsibility should be familiar to Martinez, who previously held the dual roles of global new business director and head of the Global Brand Management division at Ogilvy. Brazil-based Lindner, meanwhile, is a Leo Burnet EMEA alum who joined McCann in 2005 as regional director of Latin America and the Caribbean.