• BBC, Wednesday, May 23, 2007 10:30 AM

WPP will pick up the £2.5 million ($4.9 million) tab for a libel case brought by Martin Sorrell, who sued two former Italian colleagues for allegedly running an online hate campaign against him.

He accepted £120,000 ($237,000) in damages to settle the case, and the defendants did not have to admit to any liability. BBC business editor Robert Peston notes that many thought WPP would split the bill with Sorrell, but the board decided to pay it all.

The case pitted him against Italian firm Fullsix Spa and two former executives: Marco Benatti and Marco Tinelli. It charged they published defamatory material on a blog about Sorrell and a WPP executive, Daniela Weber, along with sending an email with a "grossly intrusive" computer-generated image of the two. But an investigation of the defendants' electronic footprints failed to link them with the email, sent via software that covered up the origin of the message.

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