Sweden’s largest PR group, Kreab, is launching a London financial
and corporate agency which will begin life representing Kreab clients
including Astra Zeneca, Scania, Ericsson and Volkswagen.
The agency will be headed by John Brill, who founded Sterling PR - now
GCI - in 1976. Brill, who sold his agency to GCI parent Grey Advertising
in 1987 and stayed on until 1993 as chairman and CEO, is returning to PR
full-time after an absence of six years.
Kreab, which employs 150 people and already has wholly-owned offices in
Stockholm, Brussels, Helsinki and Oslo, ranked as the tenth-largest
European network in PR Week’s 1999 survey, with an income of pounds 14
million in the year to June 1999.
Founder Peje Emilsson said: ’When it became clear London would continue
to be the central point for investment banking in Europe, we decided
that, as communicators, we have to be here.’
For the last four years, Brill has acted as Kreab’s representative in
London. After leaving GCI, he set up John Brill Consulting, where he is
both headhunter and PR adviser. Kreab has bought his business and
appointed him MD of Kreab Communications in the UK.
Brill, who was the only consultant at John Brill Consulting, intends to
recruit six people with corporate, financial and public affairs
expertise by the end of the year, and to double the number by the end of
the second year.
Diary, p28.
