WPP’s chief executive Sir Martin Sorrell is facing a shareholders’ revolt in relation to the total reward package he received in 2011, led by the corporate governance consultancy Institutional Shareholders Services.
Salary, bonuses and share incentives that vested in 2011 totalled £11 million, up by 39% on 2010. When pension contributions and cash paid in lieu of dividends are included, the total reward package for 2011 was £13 million, an increase of 37.5%.
Some £7.3 million of Sir Martin’s rewards received in 2011 were earned in earlier years under a range of long-term incentive schemes.
It is difficult to make direct c0mparisons with the rewards paid to Omnicom Group’s chief executive John Wren although he seems to have done a little less well than Sir Martin Sorrell in 2011. His package totalled almost £10 million, reflecting an increase of about 42% on his 2010 package. But those figures reflect what was earned in 2011 whereas the figures for Sir Martin Sorrell are those actually made available to him in 2011.
Wren’s basic salary was considerably less than Sorrell’s – at $1 million (£647,000) compared with Sorrell’s £1.3 million.
At Publicis, chief executive Maurice Levy managed to survive on a total package of a mere €3.6 million (£3 million) in 2011.
