FRANKFURT — Hering Schuppener Consulting has hired Thomas von Oehsen (pictured) as managing director of its capital markets consulting practice, in a newly-created role. For the past 14 years he has represented the interests of institutional investors at corporate governance and responsible investment firm Shareholder Services (ISS), most recently as head of Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

ZURICH — BoldT has appointed Dominique Morel as a partner in its Zurich office from 1 June. For the past 10 years, Morel has been a partner at KPMG Switzerland, focusing on reputation management, marketing consulting and customer experience. He has also served in leadership positions in a number of Swiss-based agencies and is the president of HarbourClub, the Swiss CCO circle.

LONDON — Communications recruitment agency Ellwood Atfield is offering a #C19CommsVolunteers service connecting expert communicators with organisations who cannot afford their help or are snowed under fighting Covid-19, including charities, not-for-profits and other organisations involved in health, social care and housing who need help on employee communications, crisis communications or lobbying. If you need help, email [email protected]; if you can offer your expertise for free, email [email protected].

LONDON — Brandnation has been appointed by gym group and fitness brand Starks Fitness to support the growth of the brand. The agency will be responsible for amplifying the company's fitness portfolio including SF Retreat, the company's international fitness and wellbeing retreat, training plans and its nutrition supplement range, SF Nutrition. The marketing plan, spanning social, content, PR and influencer marketing, will be headed up by Brandnation’s sport and lifestyle division’s account director, Joe Murgatroyd.

LONDON — Milk & Honey has hired its first head of content, Adam Toms. The hire takes the UK team at the four-year-old agency to 20, with fees of more than £1 million. Toms joins from Genomics England, where he led on editorial, and has also been head of UK writing at WE and head of communications at a national medical regulator. At Milk & Honey he will oversee all client content and build the writing capabilities of in-house teams.

LONDON — Destination, leisure, culture and retail specialist agency Kallaway is running a series of free webinars to help practitioners in these hard-hit sectors address communications challenges around coronavirus. The webinars, led by Kallaway CEO Will Kallaway, are aimed at marketing and PR teams, asset managers and others in communications or leadership roles.

LONDON — A new survey by brand publishing agency Speak Media has found that senior in-house communicators are motivated by personal pride in the content created by their brands. “Creating content that I am proud of” scored highest, at 186 points out of 200. Coming in at second and third place were “maintaining our organisation's reputation” and “enjoying my work”. More functional objectives, such as serving existing audiences and engaging new ones were lower down the pecking order. The lowest scoring statement was “I want to raise the profile of me and my team.”

LONDON — The Public Relations and Communications Association (PRCA) has shifted all its training online to ensure public relations professionals are able to continue their professional development despite the Covid-19 outbreak. Training sessions scheduled in March and April will be replaced with interactive virtual training. More webinars to support members through the crisis are being developed, including a free crisis communications webinar for members and non-members around coronavirus.