A former CEO within WPP Media is suing the media-buying subsidiary and its holding company, WPP, accusing it of wrongful termination, retaliation and violations of whistleblower protection laws in California and New York.
Richard Foster, who served as CEO of Motion Content Group until early July of 2025, alleged in the lawsuit that his actions of reporting what “he reasonably believed” to be unlawful and unethical practices regarding WPP’s rebate ad revenue recognition, along with his refusal to participate in such practices, led to his termination of himself and his team.
The case, Foster v. WPP plc and GroupM Worldwide LLC d/b/a WPP Media, was filed on Wednesday in the Supreme Court of New York for the county of New York. The lawsuit is seeking over $100 million in damages.
The lawsuit alleged that WPP Media—which rebranded from GroupM in May 2025—leveraged its client spend to “force many ad-supported television and media platforms to give [it] discounts, which, rather than being passed back to the clients, [WPP Media] turned into a non-disclosed profit centre.”
A large portion of WPP Media’s profits stems from extracted rebates, media inventory and other financial incentives at the expense of the holding company’s clients. According to the lawsuit, Foster estimated that, over the past five years, WPP Media generated rebate-driven deals valued from $3 billion to $4 billion. From that, the media-buying subsidiary “improperly” kept around $1.5 billion to $2 billion.
During his time with WPP Media, Foster formed Motion Content Group in May 2017, which operated independently from the former’s “improper inventory and rebate practices,” according to the lawsuit. The lawsuit also mentioned that the company was the result of reforming and relaunching GroupM Entertainment. According to Foster in the lawsuit, the company’s objective was to help clients create content that would benefit content partners and advertisers by “continuing to invest in the content industry and lead the development of new models, commercial content structures and partnerships with media networks, platforms, talent, producers and distributors.”
He established Motion Content Group to separate his division from that of GroupM Trading, the media investment arm of GroupM, the lawsuit explained. Motion Content Group worked with local markets to ensure deals were structured “in compliance with contractual and regulatory obligations.”
According to the filing, Foster presented his vision of relaunching GroupM Entertainment as Motion Content Group to internal stakeholders in the summer of 2015. While those in his division liked the idea, senior executives at GroupM Trading did not.
During an early 2016 meeting with former global president of GroupM Dominic Proctor (served from 2012-2017) and former GroupM global COO Colin Barlow (served from 2014-2020), the lawsuit stated that Foster warned there was “significant risk” to GroupM as a whole “as GroupM Trading treated GroupM Entertainment as a vehicle to conceal its rebate problems.” Later that year, a report that supported his warning was released, ANA/K2 Intelligence Report, which investigated the U.S. media-buying ecosystem.
Throughout his 17 years with WPP, Foster reported activity carried out by the holding company that he saw as unlawful. Along with listing WPP and WPP Media as “Defendants,” the lawsuit included names of relevant individuals to the situation who are “non-parties.” One of these individuals, Andrea Harris (general counsel, WPP), is alleged in the lawsuit to have both “failed” to investigate Foster’s reports and took no action to address said reports.
Campaign Asia-Pacific has spent the past two years reporting on rebate-driven practices in China, where former GroupM employees have been linked to non-transparent media trading structures that sparked client losses and an ongoing trial. Our reporting has documented how China’s media supply chain has historically relied on complex incentive models—rebates, inventory swaps, barter-like arrangements and volume-based kickbacks—that often blur the line between accepted local practice and unacceptable client risk.
According to the current US lawsuit, Foster faced retaliation such as “authority over Foster’s job responsibilities, compensation and promotion decisions, placement within [WPP Media], compliance expectations and his termination.”
WPP has provided the following statement:
“The company is aware of a lawsuit in the New York State Court filed by a former employee who was let go in a recent organisational restructuring. The court has not yet made any findings in relation to the allegations and we will defend them vigorously.”
The original version of the Campaign US story can be read here.
