Advertising fat cat Sorrell’s financial, sexual harassment scandals


This 5 April 2018 CNN video is called WPP CEO Martin Sorrell Under Investigation.

From Digiday UK:

Martin Sorrell is out at WPP

April 14, 2018, by Shareen Pathak

WPP CEO [Sir] Martin Sorrell left his job at the top of the world’s largest ad holding company Saturday, just about two weeks after the company launched an investigation into personal misconduct by the 33-year ad industry veteran. …

Earlier this month, WPP had announced that it was starting an investigation into Sorrell, responding to allegations of personal misconduct. Sources familiar with the matter said that the allegations involved financial dealings. …

Sorrell himself is a symbol for the ad industry itself. The exec, who took a stake in WPP back in 1985 with the goal of building a holding company for marketing services, has been one of the most well-known and outspoken figures in advertising. …

In recent years, he’s faced his share of criticism, for his close to $100 million yearly payout to the way his company dealt with allegations of sexual harassment crisis against Gustavo Martinez, the former CEO at J Walter Thompson. That suit, brought by former chief communications officer Erin Johnson, was only settled earlier this month, with many criticizing WPP for its handling of the issue.

“It’s the end of an era,” said one WPP employee who spoke under condition of anonymity. “It’s a little shocking, but it feels like comeuppance.”

From Morningstar.com (not to be confused with the British socialist daily The Morning Star), 14 April 2018:

The 73-year-old Mr. Sorrell had been at the helm since he founded the company in 1986 and has helped build it into the largest advertising holding company in the world. It boasts a host of blue-chip creative agencies like J. Walter Thompson and Young & Rubicam, as well as powerhouse media-buyer GroupM. WPP produces ads for some of the world’s biggest companies, from Ford to Unilever.

From The Morning Star (the British daily), 4 January 2018:

On Fat Cat Thursday bosses rake in as much money as the average worker makes all year

TUC research shows that bosses are paid 120 times the average worker’s wage

Top of the fat-cat pay pile for the second year running was Sir Martin Sorrell, the chief executive of advertising giant WPP whose total pay was a whopping £48.1m.

Also from The Morning Star, 2 August 2017:

But it would take an average worker an astonishing 1,718 years to earn what advertising boss Sir Martin Sorrell received last year alone.

1 thought on “Advertising fat cat Sorrell’s financial, sexual harassment scandals

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.