(Adds quotes)
LONDON, March 16 (Reuters) - Martin Sorrell, the world's
most famous advertising executive, expects global economies to
roar back to life as they recover from the pandemic over the
next two years, but is worried about what comes after that.
"The drum beat in our daily meetings is getting louder and
louder and louder, things are flying," the executive chairman of
digital advertising company S4 Capital told Reuters,
adding the tech and healthcare sectors were leading the charge.
He said he expected his firm to be at the "north end" of the
market's estimates of 15 to 20% like-for-like gross profit
growth for last year, and is eyeing more deals, including a
small content one.
He also said that ideally S4 would one day agree a
transformational deal where it inserts itself into a bigger
company that is then run together. He suggested the digital
transformation company Globant as an ideal partner.
The almost three-year-old S4 counts Google, Facebook and
another undisclosed global tech firm as clients and is purely
focused on digital advertising, which has continued to grow in
the pandemic and now accounts for more than half of ad spend.
"I think we're a royalty on the growth of digital
transformation," Sorrell said. "We will be at the north end of
the market's estimates of 15 to 20% like-for-like growth during
COVID," he said.
He said he was "extremely bullish" about 2021 and 2022 as
consumers and companies resume spending, but longer term he is
worried about soaring government debt.
"The consumer has been saving like crazy, and I think
companies have been saving like crazy and I think they're going
to open the spigots in Q2," he said.
"It'll be great for '21 and '22, but then how do we figure
out who's going to pay for this?"
(Reporting by Paul Sandle and Kate Holton. Editing by Louise
Heavens and Mark Potter)
WPP (WPP)
