• by Richard Whitman , Columnist, May 3, 2022

Stagwell will hold its first annual meeting since merging with MDC Partners last year at its New York headquarters in New York on June 4.

Shareholders are expected to reelect the existing nine board members—including chairman and CEO Mark Penn--and vote on several other routine matters. A vote on executive pay is advisory only.

The company's latest proxy statement disclosed compensation for the highest paid executives in 2021. Not surprisingly, CEO Penn was at the top of the list with total compensation of just over $12 million. That was a sharp bump up from the roughly $1.8 million he earned during COVID-ravaged 2020 when many Adland senior executives took pay cuts as earnings and revenues tumbled throughout the industry.

The second highest paid executive last year at the firm was David Ross, the former general counsel at MDC who left right around the time of the merger. His total comp was $6.4 million, most of which was part of a $5.9 million severance package.