Sir Martin Stuart Sorrell was born on 14 February 1945 and is a British businessman and the founder of WPP plc, the world's largest advertising and PR group, both by revenue and the number of staff.
21 Facts About Martin Sorrell
2.
Martin Sorrell is consistently one of the UK's highest-paid corporate executives.
3.
Martin Sorrell has served on boards and advisory bodies of a number of high-profile public, academic and business organisations, including several leading business schools, both in the UK and internationally.
4.
Martin Stuart Sorrell was born in London on 14 February 1945 to a Jewish family: his father was an electronics retailer, whose ancestors came from Ukraine, Poland and Romania.
5.
Martin Sorrell was educated at the independent Haberdashers' Boys' School, then studied Economics at Christ's College, Cambridge, and gained an MBA from Harvard University in 1968.
6.
Martin Sorrell joined Glendinning Associates, then James Gulliver and then worked for the sports agent Mark McCormack.
7.
Martin Sorrell undertook this by refining the practice of the 'earn-out'.
8.
In 1985, Martin Sorrell privately invested in Wire and Plastic Products plc, a British wire shopping basket manufacturer, and joined it full-time as chief executive in 1986.
9.
Martin Sorrell agreed to change a contract with the company which had been much criticised by institutional shareholders in WPP as being unfairly written in Sorrell's favour.
10.
Under the previous agreement if Martin Sorrell had been terminated, it would have led to a very large payout; the new agreement provided him instead with no termination payment.
11.
In September 2017, Martin Sorrell criticised the marketing industry, arguing it is "too competitive" and that agencies value winning contracts, whether they are profitable or not, over content since making the headlines in a trade magazine is more important.
12.
In October 2011 Martin Sorrell went on the BBC to defend large increases in his and other CEO pay packages at a time when real average wages in the Western world were declining.
13.
In May 2018, Martin Sorrell acquired Derriston Capital, a cash shell listed on the London Stock Exchange, with plans to create a marketing company called S4 Capital.
14.
Martin Sorrell invested $53 million of his money, and raised $15 million more from investors.
15.
Martin Sorrell is a governor of London Business School, and a member of the advisory boards of both the Judge Business School in Cambridge, UK and IESE in Spain.
16.
Martin Sorrell is chairman of the Global Advisory Board of the Centre for International Business and Management, at the University of Cambridge, UK.
17.
Martin Sorrell was knighted in the 2000 New Year Honours.
18.
On 27 September 2007, Martin Sorrell was awarded the Harvard Business School's highest honour, the Alumni Achievement Award, by Dean Jay O Light.
19.
Martin Sorrell was first married to Sandra Finestone, with whom he has three sons, but the marriage broke down in 2003.
20.
Jonathan Martin Sorrell is president of the hedge fund Man Group.
21.
Martin Sorrell next married Cristiana Falcone, director of media and entertainment industries at the World Economic Forum.