WPP, the world’s largest marketing services company, earned record profits of more than $1.45 billion for 2011, up a whopping 43% from the year prior year.
According to Ad Age, income at WPP was up was up 11.4% year-over-year to $16.05 billion.
I’d like to ask that you pause, like I am, and consider this wealth. $1.5 billion after operating expenses, just last year. WPP will make more this year, and next year and the next. It appears that the copywriters, art directors, web devs and brand strategists of the world are making Sirs rich.
Creative industries are powerhouses.
WPP also reported that it currently employs over 158,000 full-time people, up by approximately 12,000 from the prior year.
In other holding company news, The Guardian notes that WPP is poised to move its headquarters back to London from Dublin now that the government has promised to introduce new rules to clarify the taxation of foreign profits earned by multinationals.
Sir Martin Sorrell, chief executive of WPP, moved the company’s tax domicile to Ireland in 2008 in protest at the prospect of the “double taxation” of overseas profits – once abroad and again for a second time in the UK.
