A new filing in a lawsuit from a fired WPP executive alleges that Sony, one of the ad giant's major partners, investigated the company and concluded it had improperly withheld rebates from clients.
The lawsuit says that Sony presented the findings of its investigation to WPP in 2025 in a detailed analysis that said the ad agency giant operated what Sony called a "global crime scheme" across several markets, including China.
The allegations have high stakes for WPP, which handles tens of billions of dollars in ad spending for some of the world's largest companies. At its core, the lawsuit alleges WPP put its own interests ahead of its clients', engineering a way to use some of their advertising budgets to maximize its own profits without their consent.
The lawsuit says that Sony's investigation alleged this is how the practice worked:
The lawsuit contains a purported slide from Sony's presentation to WPP titled "impact for WPP Advertisers — China 2024," which claims that approximately $110 million was passed back to clients that year, while $350 million remained in its rebate pool "for later utilization" by WPP.
A separate purported Sony slide described the practice as a "fraud scheme" run in China and other markets, and attributed its design to senior global WPP executives.
Sony drew its findings from the work of independent investigators who attended a criminal trial in China involving WPP executives and from interviews with former WPP and GroupM executives, the lawsuit says. GroupM was rebranded to WPP Media last year.
The lawsuit says Sony supported its findings with "contractual language regarding rebate policies, transaction-level financial reporting, internal emails regarding rebate amounts, and documentation of WPP tracking systems."
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A Sony spokesperson said the company does not comment on pending litigation.
The new details are part of a lawsuit filed in November by Richard Foster, a former longtime GroupM executive. In the lawsuit, he accuses the company of retaliating against him and firing him after he raised concerns that the group's media investment division was allegedly running an improper global kickback operation.
WPP filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, arguing that Foster failed to state a legally sufficient claim while also objecting on jurisdictional grounds. The suit is ongoing.
WPP declined to comment on the alleged Sony review and said in a statement that Foster's amended complaint, filed days prior to an upcoming court hearing, is an attempt to avoid the case's dismissal.
"Both complaints are baseless and without merit, and WPP will be re-filing an updated motion to dismiss," WPP said. "We have confidence that this matter will be resolved through due legal process."
Foster alleged in the lawsuit that the operation was not confined to China and was deployed as part of a global model through which GroupM improperly retained roughly $1.5 billion to $2 billion in profits from rebate deals over five years, by his estimation.
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