Kenyan advertising magnate Bharat Thakrar moves to oust WPP Scangroup's entire board over five years of losses and a 62% share price collapse

Bharat Thakrar, the founder of WPP Scangroup who was ousted as chief executive in 2021, is moving to take back the company he built. Together with a group of minority shareholders holding a combined 13.59 percent stake, he has written to the board demanding a special general meeting to remove every director and replace them with a slate of new candidates that includes himself.

The letter, dated May 8, 2026, was sent to the chairman of WPP Scangroup's board and cites what the shareholders describe as a pattern of sustained destruction of shareholder value since Thakrar's removal. The group includes Thakrar and his wife Sadhana Thakrar, who together hold 10.48 percent of the company. Their stake meets the threshold under Article 44.4 of the company's Articles of Association, which requires the board to convene a general meeting when shareholders representing at least 10 percent of the company's capital make a written request.

The numbers behind the demand are stark. WPP Scangroup's share price has fallen 62 percent since Thakrar's removal in February 2021, from Sh5.94 to Sh2.24 as of May 6, 2026. The company has recorded four consecutive profit warnings. It has accumulated aggregate trading losses of approximately Sh3.3 billion between 2021 and 2025, with the net loss widening 41 percent to Sh713.7 million in 2025 from Sh506.7 million the year before. Revenue has collapsed from Sh7 billion at the time of Thakrar's removal to Sh2 billion now. Major clients have departed, including KCB, Equity Bank, NCBA and Airtel Africa, which the shareholders say accounted for nearly a quarter of the company's revenue when it exited. The company has also shut its Nigeria and Tanzania advertising and public relations operations and divested its South African PR business.

The letter raises a further question about governance. The shareholders say they are concerned about the terms of a Sh1.2 billion loan that WPP Scangroup has extended to its parent company, WPP Plc, whose subsidiary Cavendish Square Holding controls approximately 56 percent of the Kenyan company. The terms and rationale behind that intercompany lending arrangement have not been disclosed publicly.

The directors targeted for removal include the chairman, the current chief executive, and five non-executive directors: Beverly Spencer Obatoyinbo, Peter Kimurwa, Patricia Kiwanuka, Patricia Helene Nuytemans, Jonathan Eggar and Shahid Sadiq, as well as Tebogo Skwambane. In their place, the minority shareholders are proposing Thakrar himself return to the board alongside Stephen White, Carl Adam Ogola, Kunal Kamlesh Bid and Rishab Bharat Thakrar, who is Bharat's son.

"The proposed resolutions are intended to restore effective oversight, rebuild the business and protect shareholder value," the letter states. The newly constituted board would be asked, as its first order of business, to review appropriate leadership appointments across the board and executive team.

Thakrar founded the company in 1982 as a small advertising agency called SCANAD, built it into one of Africa's largest marketing communications groups through organic growth and acquisitions, and took it public on the Nairobi Securities Exchange in 2006 via an IPO that was six times oversubscribed. WPP entered as a minority partner later that year before acquiring a controlling stake in 2013. His suspension in February 2021 over allegations of gross misconduct, which were never proven in a completed investigation, triggered a legal fight with WPP and the company that is still ongoing. He has sued for £24 million in damages, alleging wrongful removal and what his lawyers described as neocolonialist practices targeting executives of Indian extraction.

WPP Scangroup had not issued a public response to the requisition letter as of Sunday evening.