User:Jthomlinson1/Bell Pottinger

Bell Pottinger is a British multinational public relations business. It was co-founded in 1987 by Lord Bell, the advertising and PR executive best know for his role as media adviser to Margaret Thatcher.

Until 2012, the company was a wholly owned subsidiary of Chime communications plc.

In 2011, Bell Pottinger was at the centre of a controversy after managers were secretly filmed making claims about their access to senior politicians.

Operations
Bell Pottinger employs over 250 staff and has offices in London, the Middle East and Southeast Asia.

It specialises in corporate, financial and political communications.

Bell Pottinger is a member of the Public Relations Consultants Association (PRCA) and the Association of Professional Political Consultants (APPC).

History
Bell Pottinger was established in 1987 by Tim Bell and Piers Pottinger. Originally Lowe Bell – a subsidiary of Lowe Howard-Spink which Bell and Pottinger had bought out – the company became the core of Chime, a public relations group founded by Bell in 1989. Chime floated on the London Stock Exchange as Chime Communications plc in 1994.

Bell Pottinger has operated in the Middle East since the early 2000s, with its main office in Dubai.

In 2007, Bell Pottinger’s consumer PR business – Bell Pottinger Consumer and Resonate – merged under the Resonate moniker. The resulting agency was renamed Bell Pottinger Consumer in 2012.

In 2009, Bell Pottinger’s financial PR arm merged with Pelham Public Relations to form Pelham Bell Pottinger. Pelham’s founder and CEO James Henderson became managing director of the new business, which was majority controlled by Chime.

The following year Bell Pottinger launched Bell Pottinger Asia, headquartered in Singapore. The Asia business opened a regional office in Hong Kong in August 2013.

In June 2012, Tim Bell and new CEO James Henderson completed a £19.6 million management buyout from Chime Communications, with Chime retaining a 25 per cent stake in the business.

In November 2012, Bell Pottinger launched a digital content agency.

Bell Pottinger acquired Centreground Political Communications Ltd, founded by former Tony Blair adviser Darren Murphy, in June 2014. In September that year, the company launched a new service aimed at the luxury sector.

In January 2015, the company formed a specialist crisis and litigation arm.

Bell Pottinger currently ranks fifth among UK PR agencies by fee income.

Lobbying row
In December 2011, The Independent published an article based on covert filming of Bell Pottinger executives by journalists posing as representatives of the Uzbek government. The article quoted the executives’ claims about the company’s access to senior British politicians as well as claims about SEO techniques that were referred to by one manager as “dark arts”.

Two days after the article in the Independent, The Daily Telegraph reported that Wikipedia user accounts linked to Bell Pottinger had been suspended for making biased alterations to Wikipedia entries relating to the company’s clients.

The following day, amid public calls for greater transparency in the industry, it was reported that a parliamentary investigation would be launched into UK lobbying firms’ links with ministers. An internal investigation was launched at Bell Pottinger.

In April 2012, a formal complaint against Bell Pottinger Public Affairs over its presentation to the journalists was rejected by the PRCA’s Professional Practices Committee, which found that there was “no credible evidence of wrong-doing”.

In June 2014, Bell Pottinger was absent from a group of major agencies which publically pledged to abide by Wikipedia’s rules.