Politics

Blimey, ‘independent directors’ standing up to Rupert Murdoch. These bods (not the same ones presumably) were first appointed in 1981 when Margaret Thatcher allowed owner of the Sun Rupert Murdoch to buy The Times and the Sunday Times. When, shortly ...

Sirs Martin Sorrell and Richard Branson and sundry other business luminaries have written to the Financial Times blasting tbe UK PM’s plans to hold a referendum on Britain’s EU membership. This is scheduled after the next General Election, which David ...

In Europe, at least, the week following New Year is a touch half-hearted; many people taking an extended holiday and, even if they’re not, disinclined to ruminate too much on the challenges ahead. But we can usually rely on WPP ...

It’s been an interesting year but one that, as Sherlock Holmes author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle put it, more noted for “the dog that didn’t bark.” The dog that didn’t bark, even though lots of people thought they heard its ...

We’re in the middle of our ads of the year extravaganza (Paul Simons and Giles Keeble in the bag, Jerry Judge, George Parker, Stuart Smith and me still to come) but there’s no doubt what the movement of the year ...

81-year old Rupert Murdoch is ringing the changes in his newspaper empire as he prepares to spin it off as a separate company next spring. News International boss in the UK Tom Mockridge has already gone after losing out to ...

WPP’s GroupM, in effect the controller of its various media agencies, is threatening to pull around £200m of ads from UK broadcaster Channel 4 (27 per cent of the total) if the publicly-owned broadcaster won’t agree to revised (lower presumably) ...

It’s all doom and gloom in dear old Europe and here’s WPP’s Sir Martin Sorrell to cheer us up further (not). Martin reckons Eastern Europe looks the best bet, what with shale oil in Poland (aren’t we supposed to have ...

Here’s an interesting one: Ad Age reports that WPP has ‘edged out’ Omnicom in what seems to have been a two-horse race for Chinese telecoms giant Huawei (‘Hway-hay’ is what you say apparently). Huawei is a global business-to-business supplier (worth ...