The "under-fire" chair of WPP, Roberto Quarta, admitted on Wednesday that the company’s board "had balked at reinserting a non-compete clause" into former CEO Martin Sorrell’s contract after "having already forced through a pay cut," according to Alex Ralph of the LONDON TIMES. Quarta said that the priority when he was appointed chair in June '15 was to tackle Sorrell's "huge pay packet and to cap his benefits." The WPP chair said, "The sensitivity I was hearing from shareholders was one to address the issue of pay, but at the same time to ensure Martin would not throw his toys out of the pram, so to speak. I think we accomplished that.” WPP faced a "widely predicted backlash at its annual shareholder meeting" in London on Wednesday over its handling of the departure of Sorrell. Quarta said that the board had been "hoping to at some point align his contract with current contracts," but at the time, WPP’s performance was "stellar" and the timing was "very difficult." He said, "It isn’t that we didn’t do anything about it, but we had a set of priorities that we were working through. You put yourselves in Martin’s shoes: you've just agreed to have your pay cut significantly, you've also had spousal travel taken away. All of a sudden we want to negotiate a contract that you’ve had in hand since 2008" (LONDON TIMES, 6/14).
