The veteran batsman who just hates to lose

Judi Bevan

28 June 2008

Judi Bevan meets Sir Martin Sorrell, the hard-driving Eighties entrepreneur who is still chasing acquisitions for the company he created, the advertising giant WPP

‘Building a company is the nearest thing a man can do to giving birth and nurturing a child to maturity,’ says Sir Martin Sorrell, the founder and chief executive of WPP.

Privately educated at Haberdashers’ Aske’s School — where the history department was the inspiration for Alan Bennett’s The History Boys — he won a place at Cambridge to read economics and went on to Harvard Business School, which last year conferred on him its highest honour, the Alumni Achievement Award. He first worked for a marketing consultancy, Glendenning Associates, then for Mark McCormack, the legendary sports agent. He moved on to work for James Gulliver at the supermarket group Argyll before joining the Saatchis. Despite this exposure to such talented and charismatic figures, he rates his father’s influence as the strongest of all. ‘We would talk three or four times a day about business even in the midst of those big bids,’ he recalls.

Sorrell’s continued success is not just to do with drive, determination, attention to detail or even passion — although all those are important. What sets him apart is his vision. ‘Martin has exceptionally finely tuned antennae to what is going on in the world,’ says one adviser. Sorrell was an early investor in the internet — realising it would become a force in advertising long before many of his competitors. He has also shifted the geographical emphasis of the business from West to East. ‘We have 9,000 people in China and 15 per cent of the market; 50 per cent of the market in India. Geographic changes and technological changes are the two big things that obsess me.’

Sorrell says that markets are tightening in the wake of the credit crunch, although he is not one to join the doomsters. ‘Life is cyclical and we have seen it all before. What is different is the pace of change. The speed with which the Chinese and Indian companies have risen is amazing.’