WPP agencies in Australia have come to near the end of a long process, including redundancies, of devolving back to being far flung units of a London-based company.
A group of senior managers, many of them involved in central office functions, such as human resources, no longer needed in the local business, have been made redundant in recent months.
Among those going/gone is Genevieve Murphy, head of inclusion & engagement, according to her LinkedIn account.
“WPP has made some redundancies in its central functions following the delisting of the business in Australia and the transition to full ownership,” the company said.
“Several of these roles have been migrated to WPP’s agencies in Australia. We thank those impacted for their contributions to the company.”
And the business has broken local central control, with the individual agencies running their own race and reporting back to London.
The local arm of WPP still has a head, after Jens Monsees stepped down as CEO of WPP AUNZ when the company transitioned from an ASX-listed business to one fully integrated business within the global WPP.
Rose Herceg, former chief strategy officer, in January 2022 was appointed president in Australia and New Zealand.
WPP AUNZ was suspended from the ASX in April 2021. The London company paid $230 million to buy the 38.5% of the Australian company it didn’t own.
WPP’s activities in Australia are now not as visible as they were when it was stock exchange listed and required to lodge profit results and other information.
That local stock exchange listing company, WPP AUNZ, was started in 2016 when Australian based WPP businesses were effectively backed into the ASX by taking over STW Communications.
That created the largest communications services parent company in the region with 90 plus businesses and more than 5,500 people. That number is now reduced, last reported at 4,000.
Revenues then were a combined $850 million but have slipped since.
In 2020, we know that WPP AUNZ had net sales of $612 million, down 14% on the previous year but one percentage point better than the total ad market which was down 15%.
Since then, it’s hard to gauge local financial health.
WPP’s results released out of London for the March quarter showed Australia with better revenue growth than the rest of the region but well below that of the UK.
But Australia recorded a positive 2.5% organic revenue. Across Asia-Pacific, organic revenue was down 2.9%.
WPP's strongest area was the UK with 7.4% growth. The US was 2.3%.
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