WPP backs a new start for Lord Mandelson
SIR Martin Sorrell’s WPP has solved one of the big questions remaining from the Labour Party’s defeat at the last election.
The giant advertising-to-marketing group is taking a minority stake in a new consultancy firm set up by the self-proclaimed Prince of Darkness, giving the ever energetic Lord Mandelson a new reason to get up in the morning.
Mandelson, who has served as a trade commissioner in Brussels and a trade minister in the UK, will chair the new company Global Counsel LLP, which will be run by his former special adviser Benjamin Wegg-Prosser.
Sorrell’s backing of the new company gives it a strong start.
Mandelson’s career has been not without unfortunate episodes.?He was twice asked to leave his post in Tony Blair’s Cabinet.
Last night a source close to WPP said: “Mandelson courts controversy but clearly WPP feels that his business will be a success and it wants to be part of it. Mandelson moves in the right circles.”
Some suggested that Finsbury founder Roland Rudd, a friend of Mandelson’s and a part of the WPP group, might have helped the two men put the deal together.