• by Richard Whitman , Columnist, April 11, 2022

WPP’s recently released annual report shows that CEO Mark Read earned just under $5 million in total compensation last year including salary, bonuses and incentive plans, up sharply from the roughly $1.5 million he earned in 2020.

The company’s CFO John Rogers made more than Read both last year and in 2020. Last year he earned $6.2 million, up from $5.7 million in 2020.

This year Rogers earned close to $3 million in long-term incentive compensation versus none for Read. Last year Rogers received buyout awards of about $2.8 million to compensate for his forfeiture of incentive awards from his previous employer, supermarket company Sainsbury’s where he was CEO. He joined WPP in early 2020.

But for both executives it’s a far cry from the big pay days that Martin Sorrell received in his final years running the company. He received a whopping $66 million-plus in annual compensation in 2016, which outraged many investors given the mediocre financial performance of the company that year. In 2017, his final full-year with the company, Sorrell’s pay was cut back to $19 million-plus.

That’s more in line with the current Adland holding company pay king John Wren, whose total compensation last year was just shy of $20 million.

Sorrell’s pay hasn’t been disclosed yet for 2021. S4 Capital documents showed that his compensation from the firm in 2020 was around $300,000 including salary, taxable benefits, bonuses and pension. This year’s annual report has been delayed. The company has cited delays on the part of accountant PwC in crunching all of the numbers necessary to issue year-end results. The release date has been postponed twice and, at deadline, S4 had yet to set a new date.