“Embarrassing and Unacceptable!” Sorrell Blasts Long Delay Of S4 Capital’s Financial Report

B&T Magazine
By B&T Magazine



Sir Martin Sorrell, who launched the S4 Capital platform, lashed out against the great delay in the reporting of the annual results, with auditors “unable to complete the work necessary”.

The advertising agency, which was founded by Sorrell himself after he resigned from WPP, had to delay the release of its annual financial report twice due to the inability of its auditors, PwC, to get the job done in time.

In a phone call to B&T late last week, Sorrell said he believed the results should be made public by this Friday.

These delays have proven quite costly for the company as they made investors lose their faith in the company, making them think that S4 Capital didn’t want to release the report due to how bad it looked. That alone cost the agency a further $150 million from its market price.

“Delay in producing our 2021 results is unacceptable and embarrassing,” Sorrell said to investors and analysts during a presentation that was held on Friday.

He also vowed to restore faith lost in the group for its potential investors, after a staggering loss of near $1 billion from its market value.

Some of the reasons for the long delay in the publication of the report, according to PwC, included changing of staff and the lack of necessary documents “particularly relating to revenue and cost of sales recognition”.

Sorrell announced that S4 Capital is in the process of “upskilling” its finance team in order to hold pace with the dramatic growth rate of the company.

“Significant changes in our financial control, risk and governance structure and resources at board, company and practice level are being implemented and planned to try to ensure this never happens again and we return to a normal financial calendar,” Sorrell said. “[A] full debrief [is] planned to ensure all suggestions from PwC are captured.”

The report showed that S4 Capital was able to double its revenue within the last year to $1.2 billion, with its market share price going up by 4 percent last Friday.




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