The fit world of financial/corporate PR Savile Row is booming after the pandemic. It is also changing rapidly: leading companies are consolidating and striving for global growth, the founders are gradually making a profit.
The latest indication of this came on Good Friday, when it was revealed that one of the most prominent consulting firms, FGS Global, was about to receive a major investment from US private equity giant KKR.
Considered one of the city’s “legacy” stores, FGS was founded as Finsbury in 1994 by veteran publicist Roland Rudd.
Rudd, brother of former Home Secretary Amber Rudd, remains chairman of the FGS with a sizeable stake. Well known in financial public relations, he helped organize the EU Stay campaign as chairman of the People’s Vote campaign and unsuccessfully called for a second referendum after the UK’s Brexit vote to leave the European Union.
In recent years, Rudd, along with his largest shareholder, WPP CEO Mark Read, has merged Finsbury with similar financial PR firms such as Germany’s Hering Schuppener and America’s Glover Park Group and Sard Verbinnen. In fact, former Hering Schuppener boss Alexander Geyser is now FGS boss.
It thus became one of the “big four” financial PR firms in the world, second only to Brunswick, another ancestral company also founded in London three decades ago by Rudd’s rival Sir Alan Parker.
But the deal with KKR, which will see a private equity firm acquire a 30% stake in FGS, shows just how big these PR firms are getting, not to mention the Brits.
The new investment values FGS at around $1.4bn (£1.1bn). But he will soon be receiving $500 million in consulting fees each year. Brunswick is said to have already achieved this after selling a 10.7% stake to U.S. investment bank BDT Capital Partners in 2021.
Founders like Rudd and Parker will become very wealthy as they gradually pass the baton to US investors looking to further develop these advisory services. They say the world’s largest companies are looking for consistent strategy and reputation advice in business centers around the world.
Consequently, these consultants now offer financial PR integrated with political communications, sustainability, campaigns and reputation strategy. And blue-chip companies are fixing that.
But while brilliant awards go to top corporate public relations consultants, this consolidation and scaling poses its own cultural challenges. As founders make money, these agencies will compete for positions with a new generation of new leaders and investors.