LONDON (Kyodo) Sanyo Europe Ltd. will take down by the end of this year its large neon-light advertisement at Piccadilly Circus in central London, company officials said Monday.

Sanyo first mounted an ad in 1978 at Piccadilly Circus, which, like Times Square in New York, is famous for major corporate billboards. It switched to a 116-sq.-meter neon display in 1984, making it the oldest among the five single-company ads at the site.

Sanyo's pullout will leave only one Japanese business, TDK Corp., represented there.

A public relations officer of Sanyo Europe said the company had been requested by the owner of the ad space to switch to a video-enabled screen, but it didn't see the need to make such a change.

Other companies, including Coca-Cola of the United States and the Samsung group of South Korea, have switched to video screens.