Sir Martin Sorrell  is head of WPP, one of the biggest advertising companies in the world. Faced with the prospect of a shareholder defeat over his pay, most other company executives “disappear from view like a grinning Cheshire cat”. Not Sorrell. Ahead of WPP’s AGM, which saw 59.5% of shareholders vote against the remuneration report, he penned a passionate defence of his position in the FT to remind “the swelling ranks of investor ingrates” that it was he who had the vision to transform a redundant basket-maker, Wire & Plastic Products, into a global advertising behemoth worth £10bn. As an owner-entrepreneur with most of his personal £174m fortune tied up in the company, he claims to find objections to his pay rise “deeply disturbing”.

There’s one big problem with Sir Martin’s defence, said Robert Lea in The Times. He owns just 2% of the company. Having been bigged up as “the Sage of Soho” by a “complicit” media that elevated his quarterly musings “to something more Delphic”, there is a danger he has begun to believe his own spin. A 60% rise in his total package to £7.3m this year “may not be as much as that paid to his international peers”, as he argues. But it seems an awful lot to everyone else. “We may have arrived at a Citizen Kane moment, where the brilliant business-builder has begun to lose touch with reality.” Sorrell  forfeited his right to act as an “imperious” owner-leader when he took his company public and pocketed a huge sum of money. His apparent stance – “pay me or fire me” – is not that of a “responsible” co-owner. It is akin to “holding fellow shareholders to ransom”.

There’s little chance of Sorrell resigning, however large his defeat.  FTSE 100 chief executives were last year awarded an average total pay of £4.8m – a rise of 12%. And for all the talk of rebellion, there have been just four defeats of remuneration reports across the whole of the FTSE. Sorrell might have received a bloody nose at the hands of his shareholders but, to all intents and purposes, the shareholder spring remains a myth.  The corporatocracy rules O.K.

(Adapted from The Guardian)