Brunswick Group

Brunswick offices, Lincolns Inn Fields, central London

The Brunswick Group is an international PR and lobbying firm, headquartered in London. Its founder is Alan Parker, friend of Gordon Brown. Brunswick specialises in financial PR, and Parker is considered to be one of the UK's leading financial PR men (alongside Roland Rudd). It has a blue-chip client list that is the envy of most other agencies. It is one of a handful of key financial PR agencies in the UK, including: FD, Buchanan, Citigate Dewe Rogerson, Pelham PR, Finsbury, and Maitland.

Brunswick is seen as both a major force and an enigma - it has steadfastly declined to participate in PR Week's fee income rankings, for example. Its founder, Alan Parker, rarely grants interviews and is uncomfortable when he becomes the focus of a story. ‘It's bad manners to get between the client and the footlights,' he says.

Services

Brunswick has ranked at the top or near the top of league tables for financial communications consultancies. It advises clients on public affairs, media and investor relations, mergers and acquisitions, competition and regulatory issues, crisis management, international communications and corporate reputation.

On public affairs, Brunswick says:

"Our team includes former senior government advisers and political campaign staff who understand the context in which decisions are taken in government, the relative influence of the stakeholders involved and can advise on the most effective communication of a client's case. We work closely with in-house government relations teams and external lobbying firms to help broaden public support for our client's position and build a better understanding of their business among their relevant government audiences."

CFO Europe reports in March 2006:

Brunswick has long been seen as epitomising the influence-and-access game in deals circles, something that it is exporting to other centres. Notably, in 2001 Brunswick recruited as head of its US operations Steve Lipin, a former Wall Street Journal M&A reporter with a reputation for aggressively leveraging his newspaper’s franchise to get news scoops on deals. [Brunswick] has had its share of controversy over its aggressive tactics. Also in 2001, for example, a former client, Jupiter Asset Management (which had been acquired by Commerzbank), threatened to sue Brunswick after the PR firm sent a dossier to several London newspapers claiming that Jupiter was in financial trouble.

Political Connections

• Brunswick founder, Alan Parker is a close personal friend of Gordon Brown and his wife Sarah. The prime minister is godfather to one of Parker's children and Sarah used to work at Brunswick. It was Parker who recommended Stephen Carter, former Ofcom chief executive and (briefly) the chief executive of Brunswick, to be the PM's new chief of strategy. When Brown visited China and India at the beginning of 2008, he was accompanied not only by Carter but Parker as well, prompting one observer to ask - was the prime minister getting two advisers for the price of one?

• Conservative leader, David Cameron also attended Parker's wedding, alongside the Browns. Parker was pictured on holiday in South Africa in 2008 with Cameron.

• Previously, in 1999-2000, Brunswick paid more than £5,000 to the Labour Party for 'tickets for dinners', and in 2001 gave £9,000 to Labour.
• Brunswick also donated the services of an employee to the Government to help work on the Financial Services and Markets Bill - legislation which will regulate business in the City and which would provide invaluable information to Brunswick's clients."

Relations with the media

Brunswick and Parker have "a network of close contacts at the top of British companies and a similar network within the financial press. As an intermediary between these two networks he tries to shape perceptions of companies or business people."

The significance of a financial PR to journalists is explained by David Michie in 1997:

'Even the most energetic reporters know that they have to be somewhat deferential in the presence of a powerful publicist. No one on a national beat can afford to be on the wrong side of [those who]..represent a third of the most quotable sources in the country in the more liberal British media, reporters are less deferential to anyone; but even so the same principle holds true the most important corporate spin doctors include Alan Parker, creator of Brunswick.

Besides hiring senior journalists, Brunswick provides other services to media professionals as the Independent notes in 1995:

It looks like marshmallows around the camp fire in Lincoln's Inn Field for the Daily Telegraph's City office. Staff have been three-line whipped for a bit of weekend bonding on 18 November at what looks suspiciously like the offices of Brunswick, the PR agency. A mysterious memo to staff from Neil Collins, the City editor, explains: "It's an away day to discuss the future of the City Pages. Although attendance is not compulsory those of a paranoid disposition will regret not being there and the rest of us might have a good time (although some work will be done). There will be no counselling. At this stage I do not intend to answer press inquiries. . . A wise move. While they would not confirm it, the navel gaze is apparently being run by Professional Presentations, a human resources consultancy based in Brunswick's offices and run by Lucy Parker, sister of the PR agency's Alan Parker.

However, Brunswick is not beloved by all financial journalists, as this City Diary entry in 2001 shows:

The phones were out of order at Brunswick - the PR company that is to the City what lint is to pockets (annoying and hard to get rid of) - for most of yesterday. Net productivity in the City soared as a result. (If anyone at Cable & Wireless fancies making £50 in return for cutting them off again, give me a call.)

History and structure

The Brunswick Group was founded in 1987. It has developed a robust international network - for instance, after establishing a strong presence in New York, Brunswick cracked the US West Coast by opening a San Francisco office and picking up clients of the calibre of Gap, Google, Sun Microsystems and Cisco. Other companies in the group or of which Alan Parker or John Andrew Fenwick are Directors have also gone through name changes.

Subsidiaries

• Cantos
• Lincoln Centre
• Merchant

People

• Alan Parker, Founder. Parker owns 88 percent of Brunswick's Channel Islands holding company, Wynnstay, giving him control of the agency and a stake in the company worth an estimated £114m. Parker's personal assets are thought to be around £6m.
• Tim Burt, former FT media editor.
• David Yelland, former Sun editor.

Former staff

• Rupert Younger, now Finsbury
• Andrew Grant, now Tulchan Communications
• Sarah Macaulay, wife of Gordon Brown, worked in Brunswick's arts events subsidiary. Macaulay founded the charity PiggyBankKids in 2002, which is run from Brunswick's offices. Macaulay is the co-founder of Hobsbawm Macaulay Communications. She marketed Emily's List, the campaign to increase the number of women MPs.
• David Brewerton, (retired). Former City editor at The Times became one of the first financial journalists to move into financial PR when he joined Brusnwick. He is reported to have played a key role in blocking Hanson's takeover of ICI.
• James Rubin, Bill Clinton's former aide, was recruited to Brunswick's political affairs unit in 2001. Rubin reportedly left in April 2004, according to the Observer: to Brunswick's political affairs unit. Rubin reportedly left in April 2004, according to the Observer:

Former state department spokesman James Rubin was hired in a blaze of publicity by top financial PR firm Brunswick some time ago. That gave founder Alan Parker the right to brag that he had bagged one half of the world's most glamorous media couples (Rubin is married to London-based CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour). Now rumour has it that Rubin has quietly quit, although not many people at Brunswick's Holborn HQ will have noticed. 'He was in the office about as often as Johnny Vegas is in the gym,' says a Brunswick insider.

• Andy Browne from the Wall Street Journal (Asia) to work in Brunswick's Beijing office

Staff list

Brunswick employs over 320 staff, including 40 partners. They advise on media and investor relations, mergers and acquisitions, competition and regulatory issues, crisis management, international communications and corporate campaigns.

Gill Ackers	Fiona Antcliffe	Mark Antelme	Jérôme Biscay
Nitya Bolam	Zoran Bozovic	James Bradley	Lucie Anne Brailsford
Craig Breheny	Tom Buchanan	Michael Buckley	Tom Burns
Tim Burt	Kevin Byram	Caroline Cai Jinqing	Roderick Cameron
Agnès Catineau	Louise Charlton	Nick Claydon	Jon Coles
Paula Cooper	Carl Count Hohenthal	Giles Croot	Laura Cummings
Melissa Daly	Naomi Decter	Nina Devlin	Andrew Dewar
Deborah Done	Alexander Engelhardt	Andrew Fenwick	Sophie Fitton
Anders Fogel	Andrew Garfield	Julie Giddens	Susan Gilchrist
Jonathan Glass	Ellen Gonda	Christine Graeff	Patrick Handley
Catherine Hicks	James Hogan	Kate Holgate	Andrew Hood
Rurik Ingram	Richard Jacques	Thomas Kamm	Thomas Knipp
Sabine Krueger	Fiona Laffan	Cindy Leggett Flynn	Steven Lipin
Jennifer Lowney	Sarah Lubman	Keelin MacGreevy	Joanna McDwyer
Justine McIlroy	Robert Mead	Miriam Meckel	Kate Miller
Richard Mintz	Robert Moser	Stanislas Neve de Mevergnies	Caroline Nico
Glen O'Hearne	Paul Osgood	Alan Parker	Tim Payne
Laurent Perpère	Patricia Perrier	Robert Pinker	Nigel Prideaux
Jeanne-Marie Prost	Jonathan Rhodes	Sheila Robinson	Catherine Samy
Hartmut Schumacher	Helen Scott Lidgett	Anita Scott	Paul Scott
David Shapiro	Peter Sjovall	Pamela Small	Simon Sporborg
John Sunnucks	Graeme Trayner	Hartmut Vennen	Wendel Verbeek
Frank Villaz	Harry W Clark	Christian Weyand	Thomas Wimmer
Charles Young	Rupert Young

Clients

Although Brunswick are reluctant to advertise client details, they represent firms including British Airways, BT, EMI, Marks & Spencer (dropped recently) Marconi (ditto), Safeway, Casenove (City Stockbrokers), Blue Circle (fought off Lafarge takeover - cost £27m for all advisors) Standard Life (£1m+ fighting off demutualization), Newcastle United, Malcolm Glazer, MK Dons, Railtrack (before administration) and HBoS and range from some of the world's biggest companies, retained on an international mandate, to small and unquoted businesses. Also running the PR for London's bid to host the Olympics in 2012. They have offices in London, New York, Germany and Johannesburg.

• In July 2002 the Wall Street Journal reported that Martha Stewart had hired the Brunswick Group to massage her image in the wake of allegations that she profited from insider trading.

• In March 2004, the controversy over the exaggeration of the oil and gas reserves of Shell Oil resulted in the resignation of the then chairman, Philip Watts, and Walter van de Vijver, who was responsible for exploration and production. In an attempt to manage the crisis Shell hired the Brunswick Group to help it manage the crisis. "Brunswick has recently come on board, but we don't really say much more about what they do," Corrigan told PR Week.

• In late 2006 Brunswick hired former director of OFCOM Stephen Carter. Brunswick have many media clients including EMI, NTL, Reed Elsevier, FT publisher Pearson, Reuters, Emap, Time Warner and ITN.

• Hutchison Whampoa 2003

• D1 Oils plc is a UK-based global producer of biodiesel.

• Fleming Family & Partners Capital Management

• St James's Place Wealth Management Advice

• At 1st of May 2005 Brunswick Group started a trade union like support campaign for EICTA's project Patents4Innovation

Contact details

Map of Brunswick office

16 Lincoln's Inn Fields

London WC2A 3ED

UK

Phone: 44 20 7404 5959

Fax: 44 20 7831 2823

Web: www.brunswickgroup.com

External links

• Center for Media and Democracy, Former Government Flacks Find Corporate PR Path, Spin of the Day, July 29, 2003.
• Tom Acitelli, "Royal Dutch/Shell enlists Brunswick amid audit, exits", PR Week, April 26, 2004. (Sub req'd)
• "Brunswick Adds H&K's Buckley, Expanding U.S. Offering", 'Holmes Report, April 26, 2001.
• 'Former Albright Aide Rubin Joins Brunswick", Holmes Report, May 05, 2001.
• "Brunswick Scrambles to Deal with Security Lapse", Holmes Report, May 17, 2001.
• "Congressional Staffer Joins Brunswick in D.C.", Holmes Report, April 21, 2003.
• Tom Williams, "Brunswick's Williams to lead 3 flotation charge", PR Week, July 15, 2005. (Sub req'd).
• "City & Corporate: Serco tries to lose PFI label", PR Week, July 22, 2005. (Sub req'd).
• Tom Williams, "Brunswick boosts Hutchison profile", PR Week, August 12, 2005. (Sub req'd).
• "Brunswick boosts M&A arm with trio", PR Week, September 16, 2005. (Sub req'd).