Profits halved at advertising firm WPP

The Guardian reports here that profits at WPP, the world's largest advertising company, almost halved in the first six months of the year as the global recession forced companies to slash spending and the owner of agencies such as JWT and Ogilvy & Mather had to meet the cost of cutting more than 7,000 employees to cope with the drop in business. Martin Sorrell suggests that the economy will not recover to anything like its former heights – "As to whether life will ever be the same again: I think it will be the same but different," Sorrell admitted. "It will be more dominated by new markets and more digital."