Ammirati & Puris of New York will open a full-service Toronto office in September with annual billings of US$10 million, attributable to its two Canadian clients, Compaq Computer and United Parcel Service.

The agency will begin by handling these two clients but, in a release, Martin Puris, president and chief executive officer, says the shop ‘has several other multinational clients that may benefit from the services of a full-service Canadian office.’

Toronto is the first full-service branch office for 20-year-old Ammirati & Puris.

The agency had set up some one-person service offices for bmw, one of its founding clients, which it resigned last fall when it declined to take part in an agency review.

Tom Nelson, Ammirati’s senior vice-president, associate creative director, will be moving to Toronto mid-August to head the Canadian operation as chairman, creative director.

Nelson, a copywriter, has been with Ammirati for the past five years.

He was with Ogilvy & Mather in Chicago for eight years before that, starting his career with a two-year stint at D’Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles in Detroit.

Nelson’s first priority is to find a top-level art director and senior account manager to join the team.

He plans to get the new agency up and running as a full-service agency as soon as possible and will be adding a media department later this year.

Ammirati has had the ups business in the u.s. for seven years and the Canadian portion for the last five.

Compaq has been a u.s. client for about a year and a half, and Compaq Canada has been handled out of New York for the past six months.

The agency bills US$350 million annually for a list of 11 clients: Aetna Life & Casualty, BOKS Division of Reebok, Compaq Computer, Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts, MasterCard International, Nikon, RCA Consumer Electronics, The Stanley Works, Sterling Health USA, United Parcel Service and Wedgwood USA.