largest advertising agency, have announced their resignations.

Mrs. Sheila Semos, Mrs. Gerry Brashier, Mrs. Susan Tang-Peterson and Mrs.

Brenda Playle are leaving to set up their own business.

Their resignations follow an unsuccessful attempt to buy AAC from its owners, Mr. John White and his wife, Susan.

The four women had been negotiating to buy the company for about a year. But the deal fell through recently after both parties could not agree on a price.

The women, who are close friends, are due to leave the company at the end of April but will stay on to complete any unfinished work.

Their departure is another blow to a firm which has already lost two other senior employees, Mr. David Wellman and Mrs. Soraya Chasty, over the last year.

The women have more than 60 years' service with AAC between them and form the backbone of the staff.

Mrs. Semos is art director, Mrs. Brashier is senior copy writer/account executive, Mrs. Tang-Peterson is studio manager/senior designer, and Mrs.

Playle is senior book-keeper.

Both sides said yesterday that the departures were amicable.

Mr. White said he was accustomed to the "inevitability'' of losing talented staff.

Many of Bermuda's leading advertising executives made their names at his company, including Mr. Dusty Hind, of Aardvark Advertising; Ms Connie Weeks, of Trimingham's; and Mr. Ian Coles, of Bermuda Marketing.

"Any large agency is going to lose people and they are going to go out and compete against them,'' he said. "That's something we look forward to and have to face.'' Mrs. Brashier said: "It was a perfectly straightforward situation. We made an offer and it was not found to be acceptable. "We felt we needed to get on professionally and our very first choice was to keep the company we have been with for a very long time together.

"When that did not come off successfully, we decided to go onto something else.'' Mrs. Brashier said she could not release specific details about their future plans, which are still under discussion.

"At the moment we're looking at several options,'' she said. "We've not made any decisions.'' She added: "John has wished us all the best at staff meetings and, in turn, we feel that the agency will be extremely professional and well run and will be able to focus on what it does best.'' Mr. White said AAC will use the opportunity to downsize his company, replacing only two of the women.

"We had 20 people at one stage, now we're down to about 15 or 16 and we will be downsizing to about 13,'' he said.

"The downsizing of the agency has been in the plans since the recession took hold last year but we put it on hold while negotiations were going on to sell the firm.'' Now that the management buy-out has failed, Mr. White said his plans to retire early at the age of 57 had been shelved and the company was no longer up for sale.

"We're not looking to sell any more,'' he said. "The only reason we were even talking about it in the first place was because our four senior staff approached us. I'm definitely not about to retire.'' Mr. John White.