LONDON--FD’s 25-year-old brand name is to disappear as the corporate and financial firm completes its global migration to parent company’s FTI Consulting brand.

The agency has already made the transition in North America and Asia-Pacific, and will henceforth be known as FTI Consulting in the UK and EMEA as well.

FD was acquired by management consulting firm FTI Consulting in 2006, and began its adoption of a single global brand at the start of this year. FD will now be known as FTI Consulting’s strategic communications practice, headed by existing global CEO Ed Reilly.

“Essentially, this has been something that is a natural part of a process that’s been going on since the acquisition of the firm in September of 2006 by FTI,” Reilly told the Holmes Report. “Increasingly we work hand in glove with our 3700 colleagues across the globe. This is building a unified brand platform from which we can address markets.”

Reilly pointed to TransOcean as an example of a client on which FD and FTI have provided collaborative counsel. “We have worked from day one with them, beginning with FD’s crisis communications practice, and continued to work with them with colleagues from our technology practice and forensic/litigation practice also.”

Reilly admitted that FD’s brand was best-known in London, which is also FTI Consulting’s biggest office. “There are always challenges when you do any kind of name change like this,” he said. “Our people know us by the consultants who advise them. They know we have been part of FTI for six years and we operate in a certain way.”

The integration of communications and management consulting has often been mooted within the PR industry, to little concrete effect. “I think FTI stepped out well ahead of their competition in embracing FD and strategic communications as part of their service offering,” said Reilly. “I note that other management consulting firms are beginning to compete in that area with us, but nobody has an offering of the size and scope that FTI has.”

Added Reilly: “It has long been a point of view that I have held that where strategic communications counsel is most effectively used by clients is when it seen as a strategic tool and, frequently, is offered at the time when they are talking to other senior advisors such as management consulting firms - about great opportunities to enhance enterprise value or great risks to enterprise value.”

Reilly also said there would be no changes to FD’s operating unit with FTI Consulting. “Clients will see the same people and the same quality of service that they have become used to.”