• by Richard Whitman , Columnist, April 19, 2021

Interpublic’s annual meeting will be virtual this year, the holding company told shareholders in a notice dated April 16. The company said there will be no in-person component given ongoing health concerns related to the pandemic.

By comparison, Omnicom said earlier that it is doing a hybrid meeting with an option to attend in person in New York, although it is encouraging people to attend virtually.

IPG will convene its meeting May 27 at 9:30 a.m.

There is one shareholder proposal on the agenda, to lower the threshold percentage of combined shareholders of common shares from 30% to 10% needed to call a special meeting.

Actually, the current threshold is 25% according to the company, which is urging shareholders to vote against the proposal, which they probably will. The shareholder who submitted it doesn’t seem to follow the company very closely. In his statement in support of it he calls Michael Roth Chairman and CEO.

As the rest of the world found out last October, IPG announced then that Philippe Krakowsky would assume the CEO role at the company in January of 2021, which he did.

Roth, who remains Chairman of the Board, was the highest paid executive at the company in 2020 with total compensation of $16.9 million, about $400,000 higher than the previous year. Krakowsky was second with total comp of $8.9 million, about half a million more than his 2019 total. But now that he’s CEO, expect him to get a fairly handsome bump in pay assuming he meets performance targets this year.