Dooner, who stepped down as the group's chief executive earlier this year to return to his old job as the head of its McCann-Erickson subsidiary, was paid $1,250,000 last year, according to figures released by Interpublic to accompany its annual report.
But, under a pension plan, Dooner,who at 53 is two years off his earliest retirement date, could net more than $2 million a year for 15 years .
The figures will dismay staff and shareholders of the group, which saw a 79 per cent drop in fourth-quarter profits to just £12.7 million, blamed largely on the advertising recession.
IPG is also facing a Securities and Exchange Commission probe into millions of dollars worth of accounting errors dating back to 1997.
Dooner's sole fiscal "punishment" for IPG's poor showing was the withholding of a bonus to him last year. In 2001, this amounted to $500,000.
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