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Cannes Lions ISS

WPP CEO Sir Martin Sorrell criticises ISS report on his pay package

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By Stephen Lepitak, -

June 28, 2012 | 3 min read

Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP, has condemned the Institutional Shareholders Services (ISS ) for its recent review of WPP, claiming that it treated the Irish headquartered marketing organisation differently from rivals Omnicom and Interpublic Group (IPG).

Talking to The Drum at Cannes, Sorrell condemned the ISS, which handles international corporate governance, following the rejection by 60% of shareholders in June, of his compensation package.

The ISS report claimed that WPP held a "low level of transparency in the remuneration report" and also criticised the "substantial enhancement" of Mr. Sorrell's pay package last year.

“The proxy services, particularly ISS, treat us differently to Omnicom and IPG, they don’t even look at Publicis, which is our key competition. Our competition isn’t a UK-based company.,” Sorrell complained.

In comparison with his rivals pay, Sorrell highlighted the role of Omnicom chairman Bruce Crawford, describing him as “a fantastic talent” adding that he had been leading the company for over three decades. “He was CEO and is now chairman, the board is all over 60, they’ve been there a long period-of-time and the issue options - they sell the options and then get reloads and compensation.”

He continued: “I think John Wren’s [CEO and president of Omnicom] target bonus is 12 times salary – there’s a million dollar cap in America effectively because you can’t an induction over $1m and 24 times is the maximum….I always feel we should invite ISS in to run the business for a few days and find out who our competitors are.”

Sorrell continued to highlight the acquisition of Adam and Even by Omnicom, adding that it was this company and IPG it also competed with on the Unilever media review, and expected to do so again on the Johnston & Johnston review. Publicis he described as “aggressive competitors”, describing the French market as having “less transparency” and elsewhere.

“They don’t have the proxy services,” he said of France. “The proxy services have to look at the right competitive set. My compensation frankly would look very much ok against Time Warner, CBS and Viacom and that’s who IPG and Omnicom have been compared amongst. In that sense I’d rather be John Wren or Michael Roth (IPG) than Martin Sorrell,” he added before laughing.

Despite this, Sorrell told The Drum that he fully accepted the vote as part of “a democracy”.

Sorrell also relayed the importance of the AKQA acquistion as well as his views on the Eurozone and winning Holding Company of the Year while attending the Festival of Creativity.

Cannes Lions ISS

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WPP plc is a British multinational communications, advertising, public relations, technology, and commerce holding company headquartered in London, England. It was...

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