The departure in October of 2010 of former president Adam Miller was clearly a significant loss, but it was also a tribute to Miller’s work—he joined NBCUniversal in a senior communications role, after Abernathy MacGregor counseled on the company’s Comcast merger—and the smooth transition to a new leadership regime was a tribute to the firm’s depth of management and succession planning. Longtime AMG execs Chuck Burgess and Winnie Lerner—both have more than 15 years of experience at the firm—were named co-presidents and there were new roles for other Abernathy veterans: Lex Suvanto was named chief operating 0fficer; Ian Campbell was named vice chairman, and continues to serve as head of West Coast operations; Tom Johnson was appointed head of the firm’s mergers and acquisitions practice; Carina Davidson was given responsibility for AMG’s involvement in international network AMO; and David Schneiderman joined the firm full time as a managing director with a remit to grow the San Francisco office.
How disruptive was the transition? AMG was ranked number two in US M&A by volume and number one by deal value through the first quarter of 2011. That M&A activity included some of the biggest deals of the past 12 months: Sanofi-Aventis’ acquisition of Genzyme; Duke Energy’s merger with Progress Energy; Pepsico’s acquisition of Wimm-Bill-Dann Foods; Wal-Mart’s acquisition of Massmart Holding; Hewlett-Packard’s acquisition of 3PAR and ArcSight; Man Group’s merger with GLG Partners; Comcast’s sale of Bresnan Communications to Cablevision; VeriSign’s acquisition of Symantec; and Yahoo!’s sale of Hotjobs to Monster Worldwide.
“Abernathy MacGregor played a critical role in the success of Sanofi’s acquisition of Genzyme,” says Laure Thibaud, senior vice president, communications, at Sanofi. “The AMG team worked hand-in-hand with our senior executives and our legal and financial advisors to develop strategies, anticipate problems and execute our plan perfectly. Their deep media relationships also proved invaluable throughout the process. I was consistently impressed with their problem-solving skills, their responsiveness and the quality of their counsel.”
But the firm has expanded significantly beyond the M&A arena, with additional practice areas covering investor relations, initial public offerings, corporate and financial public relations, crisis communications (with a particularly impressive focus on litigation) and corporate restructuring and bankruptcy. Interesting work ranged from working with the international division of Walmart to tell the company’s global growth story to the US investment community to counseling Hewlett Packard through the resignation of its CEO and subsequent management transition; from working with the owners of the New York Mets to clarify their involvement in the Bernie Madoff case to helping Sprint make the case against the proposed merger of AT&T and T-Mobile.
There was new business too, from the likes of Walmart, PG&E, Sprint, Siemens, NBCUniversal, Duke Energy, TIAA-CREF, CH2M Hill, the Daily Beast, KPMG, Gilead Science, Spruce Private Investors, and Henkel, on the way to record revenues for the year. And new developments, from the launch of a new Houston office to rapid expansion in San Francisco (clients include HP and Yahoo!) to the launch of a new rankings management practice designed to maximize performance of “most admired” and other third-party rankings. The firm also continued to build its data breach expertise, having counseled several companies through data leaks, data theft and cyber-attacks.
Finally, AMO, AMG’s international network, continued to expand its geographic presence in 2010 with the addition of three new partners: Porda Havas (China and Hong Kong), Ad Hoc Communication Advisors (Italy) and Springtime (Sweden). Along with existing partners in the UK (Maitland), France (Euro RSCG C&O), Germany (Hering Schuppener), Spain (Llorente & Cuenca), Switzerland and the Netherlands, those additions expand what may be the most impressive corporate and financial communications network in the world.