THE LUVVY RECOVERY
Sir Martin Sorrell, the chief executive of WPP, yesterday said that the LuVVy-shaped recovery was still on track, but warned that it had been “battered” by recent turmoil, writes David Crow. Sir Martin’s recovery analogies have been closely-watched ever since he predicted a “bath-shaped” advertising downturn in 2002. So what does he mean by a LuVVy recovery?
L The recovery is progressing at different speeds in different parts of the world. After a very steep recession, Western Europe has stagnated and will continue to bump along the bottom for the foreseeable future, says Sir Martin.
UV When Sir Martin first predicted the shape of the recovery in 2009, he said that North America would stagnate for a short while before recovering strongly. But the US economy surpassed his expectations and he upgraded it to a ‘V’ shaped recession.
V Sir Martin always predicted that the BRIC economies – Brazil, Russia, India and China – and the so-called “next eleven countries” would bounce back from the global recession more quickly that the West.