By Kate Holton
LONDON (Reuters) -WPP, the world’s biggest advertising company, on Thursday said it would not pay former CEO Martin Sorrell his share incentive awards due to what it said were leaks of confidential client information to the media.
WPP said in its annual report that the compensation committee determined that the five-year 2016 and 2017 EPSP Awards granted to Sorrell would lapse.
The decision was made due to “Sir Martin Sorrell’s disclosure of confidential information belonging to WPP and certain of its clients to the media during his tenure as a WPP director,” WPP said.
Sorrell, who founded WPP in 1985 but left in 2018, said the move was petty and that his lawyers would deal with it.
“Just another case of peanut envy,” Sorrell told Reuters. “It’s a bit rich that they’re accusing me of leaks, given their own over the last three years.”
“They’ve had to go back several years to try and find an excuse to deny me what’s mine. I’ve left it to my lawyers to deal with,” Sorrell said.
Sorrell, the most famous advertising boss of his generation, built WPP into the world’s biggest advertising company through a string of major deals to offer advertising, media buying services, pr and data analytics to global brands such as Ford, HSBC and Unilever.
He left the British firm in 2018 over a complaint about personal misconduct which he always denied. He has since launched a new digital advertising company that already has a market value of 3 billion pounds ($4.2 billion) and a large roster of clients.
($1 = 0.7169 pounds)
(Reporting by Kate Holton; editing by Guy Faulconbridge)
