The board of WPP has been accused of ‘neo-colonialist practices’ by a disgruntled Kenyan entrepreneur, who alleges that the promoting big engaged in ‘discriminatory’ ways to oust him from his personal enterprise.
Bharat Thakrar, the founding father of Scangroup, one among Africa’s largest advertising and marketing companies, has claimed that the FTSE 100 agency discriminated towards him and Scangroup’s finance chief Satya Das, breaching Kenyan regulation and ‘clearly focused’ executives on the enterprise who had been of ‘Indian extraction’.
In a letter from Thakrar’s attorneys seen by The Mail on Sunday, the previous Scangroup chief govt additionally accused the UK-based advert company of ‘intentionally’ leaking particulars of an inside investigation into alleged monetary and private misconduct to native media and inflicting him ‘reputational harm’.
‘The disciplinary proceedings had been in any occasion discriminatory and amounted to neo-colonialist practices as they had been clearly focused solely at our consumer who’s of Indian extraction,’ the letter learn.
Thakrar’s attorneys added that WPP had protected a non-Asian excessive rating Scangroup govt concerned within the affair, who went on to work for an additional enterprise below the group’s umbrella. Several different WPP staff have additionally been named as a part of the declare.
Claim: The allegations might develop into one other headache for WPP
WPP denies the allegations. A spokesman stated: ‘Bharat resigned from WPP-Scangroup in 2021 following allegations of impropriety between 2014 and 2018.’
Thakrar arrange the enterprise that might develop into Scangroup in 1982 and WPP invested into the enterprise with a 23 per cent holding in 2009 earlier than buying a controlling stake in 2013.
Today, WPP owns 56 per cent of the enterprise whereas Thakrar retains a ten.5 per cent stake.
But the previous boss alleges that the advert big ‘manipulated itself right into a place to manage the board of Scangroup’ earlier than making allegations towards him in an try to drive his eventual resignation in March 2021.
Thakrar is known to be looking for damages within the area of £24 million and is making ready to file proceedings inside weeks, in response to an individual acquainted with the matter.
The allegations might develop into one other headache for WPP after an govt from its GroupM media company in China was detained by police on bribery prices. WPP fired the manager in October.
WPP’s popularity had already taken a blow in 2018 when its founder Sir Martin Sorrell resigned following allegations of misconduct.
The group can be struggling to spice up its fortunes amid a downturn in demand for promoting that has pushed its share value down 23 per cent over the previous 12 months.
Last month, the group unveiled plans to plough £250 million into synthetic intelligence this yr and upgraded its medium-term monetary targets on the again of a cost-cutting programme that’s aiming to avoid wasting lots of of tens of millions of kilos.
The agency can be mulling whether or not to dump its 40 per cent stake in market analysis outfit Kantar, which it’s anticipated might increase billions of kilos.
It adopted a disappointing third-quarter buying and selling replace when WPP issued a second consecutive revenue warning in as many quarters, blaming a downturn in consumer spending within the US and China.
WPP’s sluggish share value efficiency has additionally sparked hypothesis that it might develop into a takeover goal, with US personal fairness teams Blackstone and Silver Lake considered among the many events.