WPP's PR Empire: From Burson-Marsteller and Hill & Knowlton to the Modern Holding Company

By EPR Editorial Team

Originally published January 2016. Updated October 14, 2026.

The Times of London reported on April 10, 2026, and trade publications followed on April 13, that WPP had hired Goldman Sachs to explore strategic options for Burson, the merged communications agency formed in 2024 from Hill & Knowlton and BCW. WPP and Goldman Sachs declined to comment. A sale, if one happens, would mark the near-total exit of the world's second-largest advertising holding company from the public relations business, leaving only Ogilvy PR inside WPP's portfolio. The unwinding follows the late-2024 divestment of FGS Global to KKR at a $1.7 billion enterprise value. Two of the most recognized names in twentieth-century PR, Burson-Marsteller and Hill & Knowlton, are now consolidated inside a single entity that may not be inside WPP a year from now.

Below, the full arc of WPP's PR empire: how it was built, how it was consolidated, and how it is now being dismantled.

Founding and the roster WPP built

WPP was founded by Sir Martin Sorrell in 1985 through the acquisition of Wire and Plastic Products plc, a small London-listed shopping-basket maker that became the shell for what grew into the world's largest communications holding company. For most of the last forty years, WPP accumulated the largest PR roster in the world through sequential, aggressive acquisition:

• Hill & Knowlton (founded 1927 in Cleveland), acquired by JWT Group in the 1980s, then absorbed into WPP via the 1987 JWT acquisition.
• Burson-Marsteller (founded 1953 by Harold Burson), acquired by Young & Rubicam Group, which WPP then acquired in 2000.
• Cohn & Wolfe (founded 1970), acquired via Y&R; later merged with Burson-Marsteller in 2018 to form BCW (Burson Cohn & Wolfe).
• Ogilvy Public Relations, embedded within the Ogilvy Group acquired by WPP in 1989.
• FGS Global, formed in 2021 by WPP's consolidation of Finsbury, Glover Park Group, and Hering Schuppener, with Sard Verbinnen added shortly after.

By the early 2020s, WPP controlled four of the top fifteen global PR firms by revenue. The roster generated billions in fees, served thousands of clients, and represented an institutional concentration of communications expertise that no rival could match.

The 2009 recession inflection

WPP's 2009 preliminary results, disclosed March 2010, were the cleanest single picture of how the global financial crisis hit the PR and public affairs industry. The group's PR and public affairs revenue fell 7.4% on a like-for-like basis, with the U.S. and U.K. the worst-affected markets and operating margins down 1.2 points. First-half revenue was down 8.2% like-for-like, second-half down 6.7%, and the fourth quarter under 5%, a recovery curve that shaped the sector through the early 2010s. The PR segment was roughly 9.2% of total group revenue at the time.

The downturn exposed three structural facts about holdco economics: public affairs revenue was more cyclical than the holding companies had previously communicated to investors; the holding-company structure offered real but limited counter-cyclical protection through cross-subsidization; and the visibility of the decline at the largest holdco accelerated investor questioning of the PR sector's durable margin profile. The subsequent decade of digital build-outs and subsidiary consolidation, including the 2018 Hill & Knowlton/Burson-Marsteller merger into BCW and the 2024 BCW/Hill+Knowlton merger into Burson, traces back to the pressure 2009 first exposed.

By Q1 2016, WPP had cleared the post-recession floor: group revenue rose 10.5% year-over-year to approximately $4.5 billion, with the PR segment (then Hill+Knowlton Strategies, Cohn & Wolfe, Finsbury, Burson-Marsteller, Ogilvy PR) posting 6.9% revenue growth to approximately $349 million for the quarter.

The 2024 Consolidation: Burson Is Born

In January 2024, WPP announced that Hill & Knowlton and BCW would merge into a single agency under the new name Burson, named after PR pioneer Harold Burson. The merger went operational July 1, 2024.

• Corey duBrowa, the former Alphabet/Google communications chief who had joined BCW as global CEO in 2023, was named global CEO of Burson.
• AnnaMaria DeSalva, Hill & Knowlton's global chairman and CEO since 2019, became global chairman of the new entity.
• The combined firm: more than 6,000 employees across 43 markets.
• Hill & Knowlton was retained as a distinct brand within Burson for select global clients, primarily where conflicts inside the merged agency required separation.

The merger was positioned as a competitive consolidation move, combining two top-ten global agencies into a single top-two global communications operation. The strategic logic was scale: a merged Burson could compete more aggressively against Edelman, the world's largest independent PR firm, and against the consolidated networks at Omnicom and IPG.

The First Major Unwind: FGS Global Sold to KKR

In late 2024, WPP sold its majority stake in FGS Global to private equity firm KKR. The deal valued FGS at $1.7 billion enterprise value. According to WPP's August 7, 2024 announcement, WPP received $775 million in cash for its roughly 50% stake ($707 million after tax), with total cash proceeds of about $767 million including a loan repayment, used to reduce holding-company debt. The sale completed in December 2024.

Then-CEO Mark Read framed the sale as strategic focus: FGS Global was a specialized corporate and financial communications operation that did not fit neatly within WPP's "core" PR offer, defined as corporate and consumer PR via Burson and Ogilvy. Read argued WPP was simplifying the portfolio to concentrate on its strongest assets.

The market read it differently. Sell-side analysts began questioning whether WPP would continue to retain PR as a core line of business at all, or whether FGS Global was the first move in a broader exit from the category.

The leadership change: Cindy Rose takes over

In September 2025, Mark Read stepped down as WPP CEO after seven years in the role. He was succeeded by Cindy Rose, who took over the holding company at a moment of significant strategic pressure.

Rose inherited a company facing:

• Holding-company debt of approximately £3.4 billion at year-end 2025.
• A share price that had fallen from a 12-month high of 608p in May 2025 to roughly 251p by mid-April 2026, a decline of more than 50%.
• PR segment revenue of £667 million in 2025, down 6% on a like-for-like basis, generating £102 million in headline operating profit.
• A multi-year strategic plan, "Elevate28," that emphasized portfolio simplification, cost reduction, and a return to organic growth.

As part of Elevate28, Rose placed Burson inside a new WPP Creative umbrella alongside VML, Ogilvy, AKQA, Landor, and Design Bridge and Partners, a structural shift that combined creative agencies with the largest remaining PR operation. The signal to the market was clear: PR was no longer being treated as a stand-alone category at WPP.

Rose's own 2026 policy maximum package, approved at the May 8, 2026 AGM, is £11.1 million, nearly three times Read's outgoing 2024 package of £3.80 million. The compensation committee cited pay compression against WPP's U.S.-based executive committee as the reason. Full trace at the 2026 PR Executive Compensation Index; comparative structural analysis at The Highest-Paid CEOs in PR and Communications.

April 2026: A Burson Sale Exploration Is Reported

On April 10, 2026, The Times of London reported that WPP had retained Goldman Sachs to advise on strategic options for Burson, including a potential sale. Trade publications followed on April 13. Both WPP and Goldman Sachs declined to comment, and as of mid-October 2026 EPR's PR agency M&A tracker records Goldman Sachs as adviser and no confirmed buyer.

A completed sale would mark the most significant unwind of a PR portfolio by a major advertising holding company in the modern history of the industry. It would also represent the first major divestment engineered by Rose, and a clear signal that WPP's exposure to traditional PR is being structurally reduced.

Analyst commentary has flagged the practical challenges. Burson is large, 6,000 people across 43 markets, and legacy global PR firms have not commanded premium acquisition multiples in the current market. KKR's appetite for FGS Global was driven in part by the firm's specialized corporate and financial focus; whether private equity or strategic buyers will pay comparable multiples for a generalist communications agency is an open question.

The Omnicom rivalry and the crown that changed hands

WPP and Omnicom ran neck and neck for the global holdco top spot through the 2010s and early 2020s. Omnicom attempted a mega-merger with Publicis in 2013, a deal that would have put WPP into second place; it collapsed in 2014 over cultural mismatch and tax structure, and WPP held the top spot. Omnicom didn't let it go: on November 26, 2025, it closed its acquisition of Interpublic Group, the deal it had been chasing for twelve years in a different form, and the combined Omnicom-IPG entity moved ahead of WPP by revenue for the first time since the late 1980s. Full coverage: Omnicom Swallowed IPG. The Real Question Isn't Scale.

The GroupM Whistleblower Lawsuit and Sanctions Fight

Separate from the reported Burson sale exploration, WPP is fighting a reputational battle in New York State Supreme Court. Richard Foster, the former chief executive of Motion Content Group and a 17-year GroupM veteran, sued WPP in November 2025 for $100 million, alleging wrongful termination and violations of whistleblower protection law tied to an undisclosed media rebate scheme.

Foster's August 13, 2026 amended complaint added detail from a Sony internal investigation, alleging the client found $350 million sitting in an undisclosed rebate pool. WPP responded on August 26, 2026 by asking the court to sanction Foster, dismiss his amended complaint with prejudice, and remove his law firm from the case, arguing the disclosures amounted to conduct meant to harass the company. Full case detail at WPP's Foster Sanctions Motion.

What's Left Inside WPP

If Burson is sold, WPP's PR operations will be reduced to Ogilvy PR, the PR practice embedded within the broader Ogilvy creative agency, which sits alongside advertising, design, and brand consulting. Ogilvy PR is a meaningful operation in its own right, but it represents a fraction of what WPP controlled at the peak of its PR roster.

The end state, if the sale completes, is a WPP that has essentially exited the PR holding-company business, retaining PR only as an embedded service within its broader creative and advertising practices.

What This Means for the Industry

Three structural implications worth understanding:

1. The PR holding-company model is being tested. The thesis that a single holding company should own multiple competing PR brands, once the dominant industry model, is being unwound at WPP, has already been partially restructured at Omnicom following its November 2025 acquisition of IPG, see Inside IPG: the standalone holding company Omnicom absorbed, and is under quiet pressure across the rest of the holding-company sector, including at Sorrell's own S4 Capital, which has lost 98% of its share value since 2021. The independent firms, Edelman, APCO, MikeWorldWide, Finn Partners, Ruder Finn, and a growing tier of mid-market specialists, are the structural beneficiaries.

2. Institutional brands matter, but only when the institution owns them. The names being consolidated and sold off, Burson-Marsteller, Hill & Knowlton, Cohn & Wolfe, were built over decades. They carry brand weight inside client decision-making and on the global tombstone league tables. But when those brands sit inside a holding company that is itself under pressure, the institutional value of the underlying brand becomes a liability rather than an asset.

3. The cost-base math is reshaping the holding-company sector. Traditional PR fees are under pressure from procurement-led pricing discipline, in-house consolidation at major brands, and the broader shift in marketing-services billing from time-and-materials to outcome-based pricing. Holding companies built around legacy fee structures are facing margin compression that their cost bases cannot easily absorb. The firms that have already restructured around the new commercial model are taking share.

The Lesson

WPP's PR empire was built across forty years through aggressive acquisition. It is being unwound across approximately twenty-four months, driven by debt pressure, leadership transition, litigation risk, structural change in the discipline itself, and the broader question of whether large holding companies are the right home for PR firms in 2026.

The agencies that emerge from this transition with the strongest position will be the ones that built genuine institutional independence, and the ones that adapted their commercial models to the post-procurement, integrated-services era now defining the global PR market. Where the AI engines currently rank WPP against that transition: The Communications Holding Company Reputation Index 2026 and EPR GEO Scorecard Vol. 7, where WPP scores lowest of the three majors measured (68, C).

Deeper reading on Everything-PR

• The PR Industry Map, the canonical EPR reference on the global holdcos, leading independents, and AI Communications challengers.
• The PR Agency Consolidation Study 2026, how the Big Six became three.
• PR Holding Companies category hub, full EPR coverage.
• Holdco profiles: Omnicom Group · Publicis Groupe · Dentsu Group · Havas Group · Stagwell Inc. · Inside IPG (historical) · S4 Capital
• WPP agencies: Burson · Ogilvy PR · FGS Global
• WPP Approves £11.1 Million for Cindy Rose, the 2026 pay revolt.
• WPP Foster Sanctions Motion, the GroupM whistleblower suit escalates.
• PR Executive Compensation Index 2026 · Highest-Paid CEOs in PR and Communications
• Omnicom Swallowed IPG, the deal that took the #1 spot from WPP.
• History: PR Holding Company Profits and Losses: The 2015 Snapshot