Why I will win Cordiant fight, by Martin Sorrell

THE world according to Sir Martin Sorrell is a neat and tidy place, full of lists and numbers. WPP, the marketing and advertising group he heads, aims to have equal measures of business in America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region.

When this ambition - a suspiciously symmetrical formula of equal thirds - is described as an 'idea', Sorrell retorts tetchily: 'It's more than an idea. It's in the annual report.'

In Martin Sorrell's world, it will happen. It is inevitable. Similarly, the share of WPP's revenues accounted for by items ther than advertising will increase from 53% to nearer two-thirds. There is no room for ifs and buts.

Ask Sorrell, 58, why he seems so determined to win the increasingly lengthy, perplexing and bizarre battle to buy Cordiant, and he sighs wearily and declares: 'There are five good reasons.'

Unspoken, but implied by his exasperated manner, is a further preface: 'I've said this before and I'm not going to repeat it again.'

He rattles off his five reasons. 'First, Cordiant has two big clients, BAT and Pfizer, who are major clients or ours. Second, there is a good below-the-line business' - for which read marketing, but not the in-your-face advertising we all recognise. Retail marketing has become much stronger recently.

'There is a quote from a guy at Procter & Gamble who said that somewhere between 30 and 80% of brand choices are made in-store. Third, there is a very strong healthcare business which fits very nicely with what we have got in healthcare. The fourth reason is the branding business - they have a good branding business in Fitch.

'And finally, there is Asia - they have a good strong business in Asia. So those are the five good reasons.'

And that's that. Sorrell has spoken.

But despite the attractions of the company's many parts, isn't Cordiant as a whole something of a corporate basket case?

Sorrell then gets to surely the crux of the matter. Certainly, there are good strategic reasons for securing a takeover. But if WPP's bid succeeds, it will buy Cordiant for the equivalent of about 60% of its annual revenues.

In the advertising and marketing industry, deals are often done at twice annual revenues. Put bluntly, Cordiant's basket case status make its parts look remarkably cheap.

So does he understand what Active Value, a shareholder group that has amassed a 27% stake in Cordiant, is trying to do? Sorrell affects a certain bemusement: 'I don't know what they're doing.'

And what is the colourful Syrian investor Madame Nahed Ojjeh up to? 'I've no idea.'

He might not actually know, but he clearly has suspicions. (At our meeting over breakfast at the Connaught Hotel in London's Mayfair, the only thing the world at large knows about Ojjeh's interest in Cordiant is that she has 2% of the company. Only 24 hours later does it emerge that she has acquired 10%).

Sorrell apparently does not entertain the slightest doubt that WPP will gain control of Cordiant one way or another. When discussing WPP's drive to increase the size of its business in Asia, Sorrell says: 'Post-Cordiant we will be number one in South Korea.' Note the word 'will'.

Incontestably, WPP is acquisitive. Indeed, its very existence in its present form is a result of that acquisitiveness. WPP - short for Wire and Plastic Products - was once a tiny company making supermarket trolleys.

Having spent almost a decade with Saatchi & Saatchi, Sorrell bought into WPP in 1986 and used it as a shell to take over some of the most famous names in advertising and marketing - J Walter Thompson, Ogilvy & Mather, Burson Marsteller and, more recently, Young & Rubicam and Tempus.

Including WPP's tiniest deals, the company averages about one takeover every ten days or so.

But Sorrell insists that WPP does not pursue size for size's sake. In a rare reference to his previous advertising industry employers, he quotes Maurice Saatchi: 'If you are the best, you end up being the biggest.'

At the moment, in the global league table of marketing groups, WPP is second only to Omnicom.

When asked why he does the job, Sorrell is infuriatingly vague. No doubt the money is a great comfort.

Last year, he received £1.2 million in pay, benefits and pension plus £731,000 in shares. And Sorrell's stake in the company is worth nearly £70 million. But he says that he devotes his considerable energies to WPP simply because 'it's fun'.

'There are very few industries where you get exposure to all industries and all countries. Advertising is rather like investment banking or consulting, except they are a bit drier.'

And, of course, WPP is very much his baby. He established it as a genuine global force in marketing. Its Wire and Plastic Products origins are long-forgotten.

'I don't regard myself as a hired hand or as a manager. I suffer from what I call founder's disease, which probably has a lot to do with it.

'Founders find it very difficult to let go if they start something, if they create something.

'The qualities needed to start something are very different from the qualities needed to run a business. Doing both is not easy and there are few people who have managed it.'

Sorrell has had his share of difficulties. In the early Nineties WPP overstretched itself by buying Ogilvy & Mather. Sorrell's group was brought to its knees, but it survived and recovered. Of course he never doubted that it would survive and recover. But in the world according to Martin Sorrell, there is little room for doubt.