BARCELONA, Nov 21 (Reuters) - WPP, the world'slargest advertising company, expects 2014 revenue growth,excluding acquisitions, to be above the 2013 level, ChiefExecutive Martin Sorrell said on Thursday.
Sorrell said clients were still very focused on costs but heexpected WPP to benefit from the merger currently being hammeredout between rivals Publicis and Omnicom.
He forecast like-for-like revenue growth of above 3 percentin 2014. The company reported growth of 2.4 percent in the firsthalf of 2013, though this accelerated to 5 percent in the thirdquarter, excluding acquisitions.
"From a client point of view and employee point of viewthere has been no articulation of the benefit of the deal,"Sorrell said at a Morgan Stanley investor conference inBarcelona.
"It certainly has disturbed the client base and it certainlyhas disturbed the staff. Clients are not going to come out andsay 'I'm firing an agency' because they merged. But if you watchthe rooms carefully, there are changing patterns of distributionin the business which will benefit us."
Sorrell said earlier this year that WPP was snapping up newwork as its two biggest rivals focused on the deal to leapfrogWPP and become the world's largest advertising company byrevenue.
Among the major contract wins secured in recent months byWPP were General Electric and GSK, twobig-spending advertisers which moved part of their work fromagencies at either Omnicom or Publicis following reviews.