Even before Johnson & Johnson's $2.5-$3 billion dollar merger consolidation review starts, Aegis Group's Carat is out.

Carat's $400 million-plus North American buying and planning assignment on brands that J&J is acquiring from Pfizer will go to J&J incumbents after the merger is finalized, reports AdAge. WPP and MindShare are clear winners for now and stand to possibly pick up more in a review. At least until the review gets under way, MindShare gets to keep its Pfizer assignment despite also handling oral and skin-care brands for J&J rival Unilever overseas.

It's a marked improvement from when Procter & Gamble summarily dismissed MindShare from Gillette accounts after acquiring the razor business last year over similar conflicts with Unilever.

Keeping the Pfizer accounts substantially increases WPP's footprint on the broader J&J roster. Right now WPP's main presence on the roster is a temporary assignment for Ogilvy & Mather, which has been tapped to handle multi-brand J&J work around the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing and extensive research and consulting assignments for its Kantar Group.