Edward H. Meyer, an empire-building chief executive who transformed a midsize New York advertising agency into a global power, died April 11at his apartment in Manhattan. He was 96.

Mr. Meyer joined Grey Advertising as an account services executive in 1956, when the agency was billing about $34 million a year. He was named president in 1968 and chairman and chief executive in 1970. Over the next 35 years, he built Grey into a behemoth that was billing $4.2 billion at the time of its sale to the British communications company WWP in 2005 for $1.5 billion.

He retired in 2006. To many in the industry, his departure seemed unimaginable. In an interview with Chief Executive magazine late in his career, Mr. Meyer discussed his seemingly endless tenure as Grey’s chief. “When will I retire?” he said. “To paraphrase Warren Buffet, five years after I die.”