Sir Martin Sorrell sees pay slashed by £22m, taking total earnings to £48m in 2016

Last year, almost a third of shareholders of the world’s biggest advertising company voted against the chief executive’s pay: Getty

Sir Martin Sorrell, chief executive of advertising giant WPP, took a £22m pay cut as the company seeks to appease shareholders who have said his remuneration is excessive.

The UK’s highest paid chief executive received £48m last year, down from the £70.4m he pocketed in 2015. In total, WPP has paid Mr Sorrell £210m since 2012 as part of a controversial five-year long-term incentive plan, known as “LEAP”.

Activist shareholders have campaigned against that arrangement, but Mr Sorrell has defended the rewards, which he says reflect decades of work building the world’s biggest advertising company.

Last year, almost a third of the company’s shareholders voted against the chief executive’s pay.

“Notwithstanding the company’s superior performance, we understand share owners’ increasing discomfort with the levels of our programs’ reward opportunities for outstanding performance,” John Hood, chairman of WPP’s compensation committee said in the firm’s remuneration report, published on Friday.

Last year’s £48m package was the highest possible for Mr Sorrell under the LEAP programme which ran from 2012 to 2016.

WPP has said the pay is fair reward, pointing to a 169 per cent share price boost over the five-year period.

However, in a further move to please unhappy investors, WPP said on Friday it had changed the way Mr Sorrell’s pay was calculated. The new plan will pay out between £14.9m and £19.2m this year, WPP said. From 2018, that will fall to between £13m and £18m, largely made up of company shares. Mr Sorrell’s base salary remains unchanged at £1.15m.

Mr Sorrell has led WPP since he founded it in 1985 and is one of the longest-serving FTSE 100 bosses. His huge rewards have become the focus of wider anger about excessive executive pay.

Bosses of the UK’s biggest 100 companies now take home an average of £5.3m each year, which is a staggering 386 times higher than what a worker earning the national living wage pockets, according to analysis by the Equality Trust published last month.

The survey showed that over two thirds of FTSE 100 CEOs are paid more than 100 times the average UK salary, and 90 per cent of them are paid at least 100 times more than the national living wage.