Sir Martin Sorrell gets WPP payout a year after leaving

A year after Sir Martin Sorrell resigned as head of the advertising giant WPP he will still receive shares worth £2.13m from the company.

The pay-out is from WPP’s long-term executive performance share plan, the Financial Times reported.

Sir Martin will receive 250,000 shares plus dividends under the plan, the FT says.

Sir Martin resigned from WPP last April after the board investigated claims of misconduct, which he has denied.

He then took charge of a shell company, Derriston Capital, and turned it into S4 Capital, a “multinational communication services business”.

In July last year WPP threatened to take away his share awards when it turned out that both WPP and S4 were competing to buy Dutch firm Mediamonks, and it was thought Sir Martin was in breach of his confidentiality agreements.

S4 acquired Mediamonks later that month and WPP has not pursued any legal claims over Sir Martin’s bonus.

The share awards are estimated to be worth some £20m over five years to Sir Martin.

He still owns 1.4% of WPP shares worth about £150m.

In the past he faced shareholder revolts over what many saw as excessive rewards.

In 2017 more than one in five shareholders voted against his £48m pay package, the seventh year in a row that more than 20% of investors failed to endorse his pay.