FGS Global

Arguably one of the biggest stories in the public relations world last year was WPP’s sale of its 50.5% stake in FGS Global to global investment firm KKR , in a deal that valued the corporate and financial consultancy at $1.7bn. It wasn’t just the valuation—by far the largest in the history of the PR business—that attracted attention, but the fact that at a time when traditional holding companies seem to regard their PR agencies as an afterthought, a savvy investor like KKR saw growth and potential in the sector.

That’s partly because FGS functions at the highest level of the PR business. It gains a lot of attention for its work in the high-stakes, high-margin mergers and acquisitions space—it topped mergermarket’s global ranking in terms of both value and volume of deals for 2024—but in truth the decade since UK financial specialist Finsbury, Washington, DC-based Glover Park Group and Germany’s Hering Schuppener came together to create what was then FGH, the firm has successfully positioned itself as “a consultancy built for the stakeholder economy,” meaning that it is well-quipped to handle all of the issues that keep C-suite executives awake at nights, from geopolitics and policy challenges to capital markets communications to change and employee engagement to a wide range of crisis and issues management.

In the UK, FGS has a team of 163 and generates revenue of £52.4m (a solid single digit increase from £48.6 million on the previous year). Some of the growth came from the development of the firm’s specialist capabilities, developed by partners Joe Palombo, (the firm’s transaction-specific political risk and political due diligence offer); Amy Platts (expanding the global equity advisory team in the financial institutions sector and in ESG integration), and Laura Farris (head of the UK litigation practice). Talent acquisition and retention has been one of the firm’s key differentiators—with more than 500 of its people having equity in the business.

The firm won 43 new clients in 2024, with high-profile assignments for VESA Equity Investment, Letter One, Bloomberg, Nationwide, and Philips. On top of an existing communications retainer, the equity advisory team secured a retainer with a financial software company – and following successful Capital Markets Day support last year, we were engaged this year to carry out a perception study, and to again support the company’s Capital Markets Day as well as reporting calendar. FGS also continued to provide senior advisory for a global engineering firm on employee communications, including an in-depth global internal communications audit, strategy launch to employee and investors, and transformation communication.  The firm is also working to support a high-profile consumer goods demerger, involving multiple practice groups: transactions and financial communications, strategy and reputation, and crisis.—PH