| Rank | Executive | Company | Year | Total Comp | Base Salary |
|---|
| 1 | John Wren | Omnicom | 2025 | $69,865,846 | $416,667 → $1 |
| 2 | Philippe Krakowsky* | IPG (former) | 2024 | $16,434,634 | $1,500,000 |
| 3 | Arthur Sadoun | Publicis | 2025 | €8,300,000 / $8,960,000 | €1,170,000 |
| 4 | Mark J. Penn | Stagwell | 2025 | $7,221,971 | $1,260,000 |
| 5 | Cindy Rose | WPP | 2025 | £6,800,000 (partial year) | £1,250,000 |
| 6 | Yannick Bolloré | Havas | 2025 | €6,900,000 / $7,730,000 | €1,500,000 |
*IPG merged into Omnicom on November 26, 2025; 2024 was Krakowsky's last full year as a public-company CEO.
Also relevant, in a compensation category of his own: Sir Martin Sorrell, founder and executive chairman of S4 Capital plc, whose historically equity-driven wealth model does not compare to the other six on annual reported compensation and requires a separate discussion (see below).
Wren's 2025 package is the largest in the recorded history of the PR and communications holding-company category. Ninety-nine percent of it was a single, one-time stock option grant over 4 million Omnicom shares with a grant-date fair value of $69.28 million, tied to the $13.25 billion Interpublic Group acquisition that closed on November 26, 2025. His base salary was reset to $1 for 2026 through 2028.
Wren's normal-year package sits between $11.15 million (2020) and $21.69 million (2024). Strip out the IPG grant and he earns what a top-tier holding-company CEO earns. Everything-PR's dedicated piece on the Omnicom compensation structure is available here: John Wren Made Nearly $70 Million in 2025. Here Are the PR and Advertising Agencies He Controls.
Structural note: Wren is now the only CEO in the category who earns essentially nothing in cash salary. His entire economic exposure through 2028 is Omnicom's share price.
2. Philippe Krakowsky, IPG — $16.43M in 2024
Krakowsky was CEO of Interpublic Group from January 2021 through the November 26, 2025 closing of the Omnicom transaction. His 2024 package, per IPG's DEF 14A, was $16.43 million — base salary $1.50 million, bonus $4.60 million, stock $10.14 million, other $188,000. His 2021 first-year total was $17.4 million; 2023 was $14.44 million.
Krakowsky joined the combined Omnicom leadership team on merger close as co-president and co-chief operating officer alongside Daryl Simm. He no longer files as a Named Executive Officer of a standalone public company. His 2025 compensation figure will appear in Omnicom's 2026 proxy as part of the disclosed NEO group for the newly combined entity.
Structural note: Krakowsky's package was heavily equity-weighted — roughly 60% stock and long-term incentives — with material cash bonus opportunity tied to IPG's operating performance. Standard U.S. large-cap holding-company design.
3. Arthur Sadoun, Publicis — €8.30M / $8.96M in 2025
Sadoun has run Publicis Groupe since 2017. His compensation trajectory tells a story of a European CEO whose board has spent five years explicitly re-benchmarking his pay against U.S. peers.
- 2021 — €2.90 million
- 2022 — ~€5.50 million (first base raise, +17%, since 2017)
- 2024 — €8.20 million
- 2025 — €8.30 million ($8.96 million)
- 2026 (proposed) — €10.50 million ($11.30 million) at maximum, subject to the May 27, 2026 shareholder vote at the Publicis annual general meeting
The 2026 proposal raises Sadoun's base salary by 20% to €1.404 million and lifts his long-term incentive and performance-share targets. Publicis has publicly attributed the increase to peer benchmarking against Wren, Read, and (until the merger) Krakowsky.
Structural note: Sadoun's package is roughly one-third base salary, one-third short-term cash incentive, one-third long-term performance shares. Compared to U.S. peers, more of his pay is tied to French AMF-mandated performance metrics on Publicis Groupe's own financial targets, and less to raw share-price performance.
4. Mark J. Penn, Stagwell — $7.22M in 2025
Penn is the CEO of Stagwell Inc., the NASDAQ-listed holding company formed from the 2021 combination of MDC Partners and the Stagwell Group. His 2025 total was $7.22 million, essentially flat with 2024's $7.26 million and down from $8.42 million in 2023.
The 2026 Stagwell proxy explicitly notes that Penn is paid with no cash annual incentive. His pay is base salary ($1.26 million in 2025) plus stock ($5.62 million in 2024, similar in 2025). Roughly 82% of Penn's compensation is equity-based long-term stock awards. The design assumes he already has substantial ownership; Penn is a co-founder of the current Stagwell structure and holds material insider equity independent of his annual grants.
Structural note: Penn's package is the most equity-weighted of any U.S.-listed CEO in the category, with no annual cash bonus. He is paid to grow shareholder value on a multi-year timeframe or not paid.
5. Cindy Rose, WPP — £6.8M in 2025 (partial year); £11.1M policy maximum for 2026
Rose succeeded Mark Read as CEO of WPP plc on September 1, 2025. Her 2025 package, per the WPP directors' remuneration report, is approximately £6.80 million, of which about £5.9 million was a sign-on and buyout award covering incentives forfeited when she left Microsoft. She was previously Chief Operating Officer of Microsoft Global Enterprise and had served on WPP's board as a non-executive director since 2019.
Her 2026 package will be materially larger. WPP's new 2026 remuneration policy, approved at the May 8, 2026 AGM with 75.84% shareholder support, sets Rose's maximum total remuneration opportunity at £11.10 million (approximately $14.9 million). Base salary is £1.25 million. The compensation committee explicitly stated in the 2026 report that roughly one-third of WPP's Executive Committee — all U.S.-based — received total compensation that exceeded Mark Read's pay in both 2023 and 2024, and cited that pay compression as the reason for restructuring the CEO package upward.
Mark Read's outgoing 2024 package was £3.80 million. Rose's 2026 policy maximum is nearly three times that number.
Structural note: The WPP package is the clearest documented case in the category of a European board explicitly re-anchoring executive pay to U.S. levels. The design assumes WPP now competes for CEO-level talent in a U.S. market.
6. Yannick Bolloré, Havas — €6.9M / $7.73M in 2025
Bolloré is Chairman and CEO of Havas N.V., which listed on Euronext Amsterdam on December 16, 2024 after spinning out of Vivendi. His 2025 package was €6.90 million ($7.73 million) — base salary €1.50 million, short-term incentive €1.50 million, long-term incentive €2.60 million.
His 2024 package was materially larger — €9.90 million (approximately $11.20 million) — reflecting a one-time special listing plan charge tied to the Euronext Amsterdam IPO. That grant does not repeat.
The Bolloré family, through their combined shareholdings, increased their position in Havas from approximately 30% to over 50% at the start of 2026. Bolloré's compensation from Havas is separate from his broader family holdings.
Structural note: Bolloré's package is the most balanced in the group — roughly one-third each across base salary, short-term cash incentive, and long-term equity. He is also the only CEO in the group whose family controls a majority ownership stake in the underlying business.
Sir Martin Sorrell, S4 Capital — the equity-driven outlier
Sorrell, 81, founded WPP in 1985 and ran it for 33 years, building it into what was then the world's largest advertising and marketing services holding company with a market capitalization above £16 billion. He resigned as WPP CEO in April 2018 and founded S4 Capital plc that same year, listing it on the London Stock Exchange (LSE: SFOR).
S4 Capital's remuneration policy is designed differently from every other company in this list. Sorrell's cash compensation as executive chairman is modest — an unusually low base salary by holding-company standards. His economic exposure is almost entirely through founder equity in S4 Capital shares.
That model has performed unevenly. S4 Capital's share price is down more than 98% from its 2021 peak; the company's market capitalization declined from roughly £4 billion at peak to approximately £100 million in 2024. In March 2025, the board announced S4's first-ever final dividend of 1p per share, described as "signalling confidence in cash flow." Sorrell has remained executive chairman throughout.
Structural note: Sorrell is the only executive in the category whose personal wealth is essentially indistinguishable from the performance of his company's shares. Unlike Wren's 2025 grant, which locks upside from a specific integration event, Sorrell's exposure is the whole S4 Capital investment thesis.
What the six packages reveal
Three patterns emerge when the compensation designs are laid side by side.
Pattern one: The category has settled into a "working band" of roughly $16 million to $22 million for a normal-year holding-company CEO package. Strip out one-time integration grants (Wren 2025) and one-time listing grants (Bolloré 2024), and the top of the industry sits between Krakowsky's $16.43 million and Wren's normal $21.69 million. Rose's 2026 maximum of £11.1 million ($14.9 million) and Sadoun's proposed 2026 maximum of €10.5 million ($11.3 million) sit just below that band. Every one of these figures is verifiable in the primary source disclosure documented in the 2026 PR Executive Compensation Index.
Pattern two: The U.S.-Europe pay gap is closing by explicit board design. The 2026 remuneration reports at both WPP and Publicis specifically cite U.S. peer benchmarking as the reason for their materially larger packages. This is not accidental. European boards have concluded that they now compete for CEO-level communications talent in the same market as Omnicom and Stagwell. That conclusion has been formalized into policy through binding shareholder votes at the May 8, 2026 WPP AGM and (pending) the May 27, 2026 Publicis AGM.
Pattern three: The mix between cash and equity varies more than the totals. Wren after June 2025 is essentially all equity (99%). Penn is roughly 82% equity. Krakowsky was roughly 60% equity. Sadoun and Bolloré are closer to one-third across base, short-term cash, and long-term equity. Rose's 2025 package is dominated by her one-time sign-on and buyout, but her 2026 policy is roughly one-third each. Sorrell's exposure is nearly all founder equity. There is no industry consensus on the right mix — only different theories of what the CEO should be paid to do.
What is missing from this list
Two categories of communications-industry compensation do not appear in the ranking because they are not publicly disclosed.
First, no publicly listed holding company breaks out the compensation of the CEO of its individual PR network. J.J. Carter at FleishmanHillard, Susan Howe at Weber Shandwick, Matt Neale at Golin Ketchum, AnnaMaria DeSalva at Burson, Cheryl Overton at MSL, Christian Fuchs at Ogilvy PR, and their equivalent counterparts at every other major PR firm inside Omnicom, WPP, Publicis, Stagwell, or Havas are paid inside the holding-company black box.
Second, the CEOs of the largest privately held PR firms — Richard Edelman at Edelman, Michael Sitrick at Sitrick and Company, and the leadership at FGS Global, Ruder Finn, ICR, Sard Verbinnen, Brunswick, Kekst CNC, Prosek, Teneo, Real Chemistry, BerlinRosen, SKDK, and comparable partnerships and PE-owned firms — file no compensation disclosure at all.
When those numbers become public — through an S-1, a bond prospectus, an LP disclosure at a PE-owned firm, or a change in law — Everything-PR Research will add them to the Index.
This piece is part of Everything-PR Research coverage built on the 2026 PR Executive Compensation Index, Everything-PR's cumulative record of publicly disclosed executive compensation across the PR, communications and marketing services industry. Sources: Omnicom Group 2026 proxy statement (SEC); IPG DEF 14A filings 2022-2025 (SEC); Stagwell 2026 proxy statement (SEC); WPP plc 2024 and 2025 directors' remuneration reports; Publicis Groupe Universal Registration Documents 2021-2025 (AMF); Havas N.V. annual reports 2024 and 2025 (Euronext Amsterdam); S4 Capital plc annual reports and remuneration policy; Proactive Investors; Bloomberg; Fortune; Adweek.
