The Interel Global Practice will be headed by Jan Kallmorgen, who became a partner in Interel at the start of the year when he merged part of his business Bohnen Kallmorgen, including some staff and clients, with the Interel Group.
Kallmorgen said that he had chosen to join Interel because it was best suited to meet the growing trend for a "one-stop shop" approach to global public affairs. "Interel is expanding internationally and I wanted to be part of that," he added.
Kallmorgen will lead a team of five senior experts, each responsible for global accounts in their own time zone; the Global Practice will have offices in Berlin, Brussels, London, Washington DC, Beijing and Singapore.
It will specifically target multinational public affairs accounts and will draw on the support of the Interel Global Partnership, which links Interel to 30 of the world’s leading independent public affairs consultancies, with offices in 45 countries and a total worth of over €100m.
Interel Group chief executive Fredrik Lofthagen said: "We’re seeing growing demand for a one-stop-shop approach to global public affairs and we are proud to be in a position to work with great partner firms around the world."
Kallmorgen added: "My conviction is that the public affairs industry is moving in the same direction as the other professional services. If you look at the legal profession, or PR and media networks, they all have a global footprint because although the clients might be based in Europe or America, 50 to 80 per cent of the growth is based in emerging markets.
"The more emerging the market is the bigger the need for a sophisticated service to manage the increasingly complex current affairs issues. Interel has the necessary global footprint through our own practice and our affiliates and we will be like a corporate foreign service to our clients, with a single point of contact."
The Global Practice will offer a number of new services developed specifically for the global market including a web-based global issues tracking system, international policy briefings, global positioning workshops and a consulting programme targeted at clients seeking to build a global public affairs function.
Interel is announcing the launch at its Global Partnership Summit, which is attended by the chief executives of each partnership member and takes place over two days (11-12 June) in Brussels.
