Kenyan advertising mogul Bharat Thakrar takes his WPP Scangroup board battle to shareholders at June 8 AGM

The man who built WPP Scangroup into East Africa's dominant advertising group and then watched his successors lose more than half its market value is now, five years later, walking into the company's annual general meeting to try to take it back.

Bharat Thakrar, founder and former chief executive of WPP Scangroup, has called on minority shareholders to attend and vote at the company's twentieth AGM, scheduled for Monday, June 8, 2026, in support of resolutions that would remove the entire board and replace it with a slate of directors led by Thakrar himself. He posted the appeal directly on LinkedIn on June 1, urging shareholders to make their voices heard. "After years of deepening losses and eroding shareholder value," he wrote, "this is the moment for the voice of minority shareholders to be heard."

The confrontation has been building since May 8, when Thakrar, his wife Sadhana Thakrar and six other minority shareholders holding a combined 13.59 percent of the company's issued share capital wrote formally to the board chairman demanding the ouster of all nine directors and the group's chief executive. Under WPP Scangroup's articles of association, shareholders controlling at least 10 percent of issued capital can demand a general meeting. The Thakrars' 10.48 percent stake met that threshold. The board folded the requisition directly into the AGM agenda as item eight rather than convening a separate extraordinary meeting.

The numbers Thakrar and his allies are citing in support of the action are stark. WPP Scangroup's share price stood at Sh5.94 on February 18, 2021, the day Thakrar was removed as chief executive. It had fallen to Sh2.24 by May 6, 2026, a decline of approximately 62 percent. The company recorded 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 prior year. Revenue has collapsed from around Sh7 billion at the time of Thakrar's exit to approximately Sh2 billion now.

Major clients have left in the same period. KCB, Equity Bank, NCBA and Airtel Africa, which together accounted for roughly a quarter of the company's revenue, all departed under the current leadership, according to documents filed by the shareholder bloc.

WPP Scangroup, listed on the Nairobi Securities Exchange under the ticker SCAN, is 56 percent controlled by its British parent, WPP Group, the global advertising conglomerate. The arithmetic of Monday's meeting is therefore straightforward and unfavourable for Thakrar. WPP's majority block is almost certainly sufficient to defeat every removal resolution at the AGM on its own. The minority shareholders, at 13.59 percent, need WPP to abstain or support them, which appears unlikely given WPP's formal backing of the current board and chief executive.

The board pre-empted three of the removal resolutions before the AGM was held. On May 13, two days before the AGM notice was published, WPP Scangroup confirmed the retirement of three directors named in Thakrar's ouster bid, all three WPP-appointed executives who had already left the parent company. The departures, while framed as ordinary board refreshment, directly addressed a portion of Thakrar's case.

Thakrar was ousted from the company he founded in February 2021 over alleged gross misconduct, allegations he has consistently denied. He has been pursuing a court claim against WPP Scangroup and WPP Group for approximately £24 million, citing what he describes as irregular and unlawful removal.

Whether Monday's vote produces the outcome Thakrar wants or not, the public pressure campaign he has mounted represents one of the most sustained shareholder accountability challenges in East African corporate history, and the June 8 meeting will determine whether five years of accumulated grievance can be converted into boardroom change.