A majority of shareholders at WPP have voted in favour of giving their CEO, Cindy Rose, a significant boost to her salary.
But not everyone is happy with approving a pay rise for a CEO who has been in the job less than one year. One in four votes cast didn’t agree with the salary boost.
At the advertising group’s AGM, the compensation report was approved by 75.84% of votes, to 24.16% against.
Proxy advisors ISS and Glass Lewis had been lobbying shareholders against the salary changes, which has a maximum payout of £11.1 million.
To do that she would have to add 50% to the company's share price and meet the requirements of short and long term incentives.
Rose, who took the reins of the global advertising group in September last year when it was reporting client losses, started with a base salary of £1,250,000 plus an apartment in the US.
Rose has been building a turnaround plan called Elevate28. The company plans to get back to growth sometime in 2027 after GBP 500 million in cost cutting, merging back office functions, and consolidating leadership at global, regional and at market levels.
The advertising group, once the world’s largest, reported full year 2025 revenue of £13.55 billion, down 8.1% on a reported basis and negative 3.6% like-for-like.
WPP’s revenue fell again in the March quarter, “consistent with expectations” and with an "improving trajectory" on track for later in the year.
Over at Publicis Groupe, briefly the world’s biggest advertising company until Omnicom took over IPG, CEO Arthur Sadoun is also getting a pay rise.
He's had to wait a few years, despite posting the best revenue growth rates among the big ad groups. The board of directors proposes to increase the CEO’s annual fixed compensation, unchanged since 2022, by 20% to €1.404 million.
The Publicis board of directors pointed to “the excellent quality of work” by Sadoun and the results achieved in 2025 which led to an “exceptional” overperformance compared to its competitors and to over-performance objectives largely achieved.
Sadoun’s total compensation could be as high as €10.5 million, depending on meeting short and long-term incentives.
Publicis posted organic revenue growth of 6.4% in the March quarter, further increasing its lead against competitor global advertising companies.
“Publicis had a very strong start to the year, outperforming the industry for almost 20 quarters in a row despite the volatile macro environment,” said CEO Arthur Sadoun.
From the Publicis Groupe annual report:
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