09 May 2007

Stinky Lord Bell...

Is it just me, or did the Good Relations walk-out story in PRWeak have the whiff of Billingsgate about it..?

A significant chunk of the staff - all but one, indeed, of the property and planning division - walk out the door, and Lord Bell claims that: "We have agreed to a management buyout."

Odd then that those that walked out have already established a new agency called Quatro with its own sparkling website...with no mention of the claimed MBO. Even stranger, given that he claims to have sold the business to the management, that Bell would also say that: "The existing business is being taken over by people from our public affairs planning division, TTA's planning staff and Bell Pottinger North's planning department."

So what, exactly, did the management buy? None of the clients, apparently, as that section of the Quatro website remains "under construction"...as does the whole of the Good Relations website...

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Nice website actually. Particularly like the photos of the main players - that Rob Fellows chap certainly looks a 'hearty' fellow...

Anonymous said...

Perception is reality. At least that's what LB says. In this the reality is they walked out, so what does that make the perception?

Anonymous said...

thy certainly don't have the look of young upstarts about them. I wonder what made them walk?

Anonymous said...

... The perception was that they got fed up with paying fees into Chime central costs. To say it was a move that had been planned for some time would be an understatement.

Anonymous said...

Are Chime's central costs that high? I guess Mayfair offices and Tim Bell and Peirs Pottinger have to get paid...

....the world's leading.... said...

When you're a publicly quoted company, central costs are always high...it costs hundreds of thousands of punds a year just to stay listed on the LSE.

Anonymous said...

good luck to em
it's not like good relations are going to 'go under' as a result - they've been about for years.
i'll be watching quatro with interest - i do wonder if they can hack it out there in the real world

Anonymous said...

I agree, I think that Fellows fellow is rather handsome!