WPP recovery: what’s the plan?
Advertising giant WPP has had a tough year, but should investors write it off completely? Or does management's new recovery strategy offer a little hope for the shares?
At the start of October, when the markets began to jitter, I thought the time was right to look for a bargain: a company that didn’t look like it would go bust any time soon but was so unloved by the market that past mistakes had been accounted for by the share price. WPP (WPP) seemed to fit the bill. At the time, the shares had fallen 23% since the start of 2018 – a year which has seen the group’s founder and chief executive ousted under the cloud of a corporate scandal; significant profit declines driven by margin erosion…