Brunswick Group
According to Red Star Research " the Brunswick Group is an international PR firm, with almost a third of the FTSE 100 top firms as clients, they are the biggest financial communications consultancy in the UK. They paid more than £5,000 to the Labour Party for 'tickets for dinners' in 1999-2000 and gave £9,000 in August 2001. The company 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." (from the Red Star Research website at [1])
Contents
History
Sourcewatch offers the following background information: "The Brunswick Group was founded in 1987. They advise on media and investor relations, mergers and acquisitions, competition and regulatory issues, crisis management, international communications and corporate campaigns. 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.
Founder Alan Parker (son of former British Rail chairman Sir Peter Parker) owns 88% 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.
- It is generally accepted that modern financial public relations was the brainchild of Alan Parker, the reclusive founder of Brunswick, an independent London-based agency that is consistently at the top of European deal advisory league tables. (See table below.) Parker was a rock band manager until his father, Sir Peter Parker, former head of British Rail, got him a job in PR. He founded Brunswick at the end of the 1980s and is credited with bringing investment banking-style professionalism to the trade. Brunswick’s influence spread within the London financial community, and latterly to Wall Street and continental Europe, where firms have copied its approach.
- 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.
- The firm 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.[2]
People
David Brewerton, 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.[3]
Other hirings in recent years include the FT's media editor, Tim Burt, Andy Browne from the Wall Street Journal (Asia) to work in Brunswick's Beijing office, as well as former Sun editor David Yelland.
In 2001, Parker recruited Bill Clinton's former aide, James Rubin, 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. [4]
Later the firm's arts events subsidiary was joined by the former partner of Hobsbawm Macaulay Communications and wife of Gordon Brown, Sarah Macaulay. Sarah Macaulay is 'the fashionably reserved co-founder of Hobsbawm Macaulay Communications'(ref?). She marketed Emily's List, the campaign to increase the number of women MPs." (from the sourcewatch website at [5])
Staff
Previous names
The same website goes on to say: " The Brunswick Group has been through many different names and identities. The aim of this is presumably to hide financial information and to keep it offshore. Records available at companies House show that Brunswick itself used to be called Lincoln Research Ltd. Its name was changed to Brunswick Public Relations Limited on 6 March 1997.
Other companies in the group or of which Alan Parker or John Andrew Fenwick are Directors have also gone through seemingly confusing name changes.
Parker's directorships
(last five years)[6] Binston (liquidated)
- Brunswick Group Limited (Formerly Brunswick Public Relations Limited)
- Merchant Corporate Design Limited
- Shiftwork Limited
- The Alma Furniture Co Limited
- Charity Projects Limited
- Comic Relief Limited
Subsidiaries
Projects
Staff
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.[10]
Business activities in the company's language:
- Ongoing IR & PR: maintaining and increasing trust and understanding among investors, analysts and media commentators
- Financial calendar: we will ensure your results announcements are correctly positioned and managed
- IPOs & financings: launching companies in the public markets and creating the communications infrastructure for a new level of corporate disclosure
- Crisis & litigation: defending a company's integrity, business practices and assets, and developing an effective path to weather the storm
- Corporate transactions: maximising support for transactions, including M&A
- Restructurings: ensuring that communications maximizes a company's future viability
- Regulatory & public affairs: utilising communications to encourage support from regulatory agencies and governmental opinion formers
- At 1st of May 2005 Brunswick Group started a trade union like support campaign for EICTA's project Patents4Innovation
Clients
- 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. [11]
- 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. [12]" (from the sourcewatch website available at ( [13])
- 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.[14]
- Hutchison Whampoa 2003 [15]
- D1 Oils plc is a UK-based global producer of biodiesel. [16]
- Fleming Family & Partners Capital Management [17]
- St James's Place Wealth Management Advice [18]
Controversies
'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 Des Wilson of BAA' (David Michie 1998: 10)
Brunswick is one of 5 key financial PR agencies (others include Financial Dynamics, Lowe Bell, Citigate Dewe Rogerson and Maitland Consultancy) who handle over 80% of FTSE 100 clients.(ref?)
Brunswick is perhaps the most secretive and invisible of all the leading City / financial PR firms in the UK, it only recently published a website, and doesn't reveal who they work for. It is known in the PR world that they have a blue-chip client list that is the envy of most other agencies. (see The Guardian, Friday February 27, 2004 available at [19]) They do not advertise - business comes by referral and reputation.
What do such important city spin doctors do? As one revealed:
- I could give you the whole anodyne spiel about the work we do for our clients - financial calendar stuff but it's not really what they pay us for. Nine months of the year we take their retainer and give them back precisely sweet FA. What they are doing is taking out insurance. Because when the shit does hit the fan they know that we'll fix the media for them. We'll get the right stories in the right papers and we can do more to get their shareholders on side than anyone else (ref?)
So what do they do for the retainers? They develop cosy relationships with journalists (many City PR's are ex-financial journalists); the offer exclusive access to clients for friendly journalists; they can deny access to other clients if a reporter produces negative copy; they conduct research on their clients competitors and supply this to the press; they have also been known to pass price sensitive information to journalists.(for examples of this practice see the aricle on the publicaffairsnews website available at [20])
March & September are busy times for City PR firms, known as results season, when listed companies must report their financial position to the Stock Exchange. City PR devotes much effort to perfecting the corporate message in financial statements. This is known as investor relations, a discipline hailed as the unsung villains of the Enron collapse, such was their role in misleading investors about the financial health of the corporation. As one ex-Brunswick employee confessed:
- 'Everyone hates their jobs during results season. There are a lot of extremely pissed off people who want out. But where else is there to go? At Brunswick you are encouraged to believe you are working for the best agency in town. You know there are plenty of others in the wings waiting to take your place' (ref?)
on top of this hothouse atmosphere
City spin doctors at Brunswick PR have thoughtfully inaugurated a regular "debating" evening for internees. As they already work 15 hour days there is no obligation to attend these long and pointless evenings. Or is there. "It is something of a three-line whip," twitches my uncomfortable source. Bad luck chaps. Latest hot topic: "Is there a future for newspapers?" (ref?)
Financial journalism
Related to this
- 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. (ref?)
- 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. . . (ref?)
- 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.
Not beloved by all financial journalists
- 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.) (ref?)
- Sir Peter Davis, the Sainsbury chairman, was banished from BBC screens and airwaves last week after a row with his "over-protective" - the BBC's words, not mine - PR minders. Brunswick, the PR company for Sainsbury, was insisting that all the TV stations carry a "pooled" interview with Davis because of his busy schedule rather than speak to him individually. This is a recent trend, my mole at the Beeb tells me, and simply not on. Similar offers will likewise be rejected unless there is a compelling reason. Pooled reports are reserved normally for interviews with members of the Royal Family or the Gulf War - events by comparison with which Sainsbury's results rather pale into insignificance. (refs?)
Exiting its Marks & Spencer post together with Roger Holmes and Luc Vandevelde was Brunswick, the PR agency which perhaps had good reason to feel aggrieved after it helped Marks & Spencer fight off Philip Green's last threatened takeover. To add spice, Tulchan Communications, which is run by ex-Brunswick senior partner Andrew Grant, was handed the account instead. (ref?)
Astroturf
A Football Association arbitration panel meets on Monday to adjudicate on whether Wimbledon can relocate to Milton Keynes and the struggle between fans and chairman is becoming increasingly bitter and personal.
Charles Koppel, who has proposed the plan, faces the threat of legal action from Merton's council leader Andrew Judge after Koppel allegedly said Judge only wanted Wimbledon back in the borough because his girlfriend was a fan.
Judge strongly denied this and said he wants the club to return to Plough Lane because it is their home. He also pointed to a council survey which found 86% of residents in favour of a return to Merton. The club then responded with a press release from the residents' association of Haydons Bridge, the location of the former ground at Plough Lane, at a meeting of which Koppel's comments were allegedly made. That said the comments about Judge were taken out of context even though they were made in a taped conversation. The Residents' Association's listed contact is Sandra Clegg, an employee of Brunswick, the PR company Wimbledon is paying £200,000 a year to help engineer the move to Milton Keynes. (refs?)
Brunswick PR in 2002 leaked damaging information on rivals to its new client John Duffield - who then ditched them! (this must surely be referenced?)
Contact details
16 Lincoln's Inn Fields
London WC2A 3ED
UK
Phone: 44 20 7404 5959
Fax: 44 20 7831 2823
Web: http://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).
Notes
- ^ Media diary, 'Parker feels the rub as star signing quits', Observer Business Pages, Pg. 7, April 25, 2004.
- ^ Companies House 363s Annual Return for Brunswick Public Relations Limited, 18 June 1997.
- ^ Tony McAuley The sweet smell of success: Financial public relations advice has become a must-have for any company with a share price, but it remains a mysterious art CFOEurope.com. February 2006.
- ^ Chris Tryhorn and Owen Gibson PR company creates chief executive post to get Carter The Guardian Wednesday December 6, 2006.
- ^Company News Feed formerly Regulatory News Service, January 23, 2007 Tuesday 8:04 AM GMT
