Sir Martin Sorrell, chief executive of the biggest advertising company in the world, will keep his pay package despite opposition from a third of WPP shareholders at the company’s annual meeting on Wednesday.
Excluding abstentions, 33 per cent of investors failed to back the pay deal, up from 22 per cent last year.
Sir Martin keep his £70.4 million pay package, including a £62.8 million long term bonus.
But the vote indicates increasing concern among investors about executive pay.
Sir Martin, currently the best paid CEO out of the biggest 100 British companies in the FTSE 100, has previously said he’s worth every penny of his multi-million pound package.
He noted that the WPP share price rose by 98 per cent between 2011 and 2015, compared with a 5.8 per cent rise in the FTSE 100 over the same period.
In March, WPP reported a 2.8 per cent increase in yearly profit to £1.5 billion compared with 2014.
A number of groups spoke out prior to the meeting to urge investors to vote against the pay deal.
Asset manager Hermes, which represent around 1.2 per cent of WPP shareholders, said he would not be supporting the remuneration package.
“Even considering the strong performance and pay practices of peers, the legacy equity incentive plan introduced in 2009 has once again led to what we regard as an excessive level of CEO remuneration for 2015,” Hans-Christoph Hirt, the co-head of Hermes EOS, told the Guardian.
On Monday, the Local Authority Pension Fund Forum (LAPFF), a group of UK based public sector pension funds, urged their members to vote against WPP’s remuneration report.
The group said that Mr Sorrell's pay rose by 56 per cent over the past five years, which is twice the year-on-year average increase in the company's total shareholder return over the same period.
Campaign group ShareAction also disapproved of Mr Sorrell's pay on Monday, while Pensions & Investment Research Consultants (PIRC), an advisory firm and LAPFF's research partner, asked WPP shareholders last week to oppose it.
Executive pay is under close scrutiny after BP shareholders voted 60 per cent against a £14 million pay deal for BP chief executive Bob Dudley.
Anglo American shareholders revolted against an executive pay plan with 42 per cent of the votes against the pay award, at the company’s annual meeting in London in April.
