Ad firm WPP struggles to make a comeback despite Martin Sorrell's departure

WPP's struggles in North America, its biggest market, forced a revenue outlook downgrade in October and Read froze hiring the following month in an urgent effort to rein in costs

The year was 1989 and Mark Read, armed with degrees from top-tier academic institutions and an appetite for business, wrote an application to Martin Sorrell, the founder of a little-known advertising outfit snapping at the heels of the titans on Madison Avenue.

The letter landed Read his first job at WPP Plc and in the next years, the soft-spoken Cambridge graduate witnessed the hard-charging Sorrell grow the company into the world’s biggest advertising group, whose work ranges from making TV commercials for Uber to buying billboard space for Pantene shampoo. Sorrell used serial acquisitions to form a complex web of agencies,