PR firm Powerscourt Group nears sale to US firm

Former journalist Rory Godson is in talks to sell Powerscourt Group, the public relations agency he founded in 2004, to a US company backed by former Ryanair chairman David Bonderman’s private equity group, according to industry sources.

Mr Godson, an ex-editor of the Sunday Times Ireland edition, is close to an agreement although the deal “is not there yet”, according to sources familiar with the matter.

The price tag for the group, which represents high-profile clients in the UK and Ireland including former BP chief executive Bernard Looney and companies such as Eir, DCC and Airbus, could reach as high as £50 million (€57.86 million), according to Sky News.

Mr Godson declined to comment.

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If finalised, the agreement would see the London- and Dublin-based group sold to Morrow Sodali, a US strategic and corporate adviser, which counts the likes of IBM, Pfizer and Salesforce among its clients, according to its website.

Since last year, Morrow Sodali has been majority-owned by TPG, the US private equity giant founded and chaired by Mr Bonderman. The US billionaire served as chairman of Ryanair for two decades before standing down in 2020.

Mr Godson served as new media and then business editor of the Sunday Times in London between 2000 and 2002 before joining Goldman Sachs as director of corporate affairs. The Dubliner founded Powerscourt Group in London in 2004, opening an office in Dublin in 2015.

According to the most recent accounts for Powerscourt Ltd, Mr Godson owns 85 per cent of the company’s shares, with Hilary Godson owning the balance of 15 per cent.

However, in the accounts which are for 2022, the company notes employees have options over 7,705 shares.

The options are spread over three classes of shares, each with their own specific vesting rights, so it is not immediately clear what share of the proceeds of any sale would go to staff other than the Godsons.

Under the terms of the enterprise management incentive scheme governing the granting of options to staff agreed in 2018, employees would only be able to exercise options and benefit from shares on an exit by way of sale of the company or stock exchange listing above a target value of the company in order to “align” the interest of those holding staff share options with shareholders “to grow the company towards such an exit event”.

At that time, a minimum value for such an exit was set at £10 million.

Revenue at Powerscourt – where Mr and Mrs Godson are listed as directors – reached almost £12.7 million in 2022 with after-tax profits topping £2.3 million. The company employed 62 people at the end of 2022, according to the accounts.

If finalised, the sale of Powerscourt would be the latest in a recent wave of consolidation in London’s strategic communications sector. In January, corporate PR advisory Tulchan was sold to US firm Teneo for a reported £75 million. A majority stake in Teneo, cofounded by Irishmen Declan Kelly and Paul Keary along with US lawyer Doug Band, was sold to CVC Capital Partners for $350 million in a deal valuing the company at about $700 million.

More recently, private equity firm KKR acquired a large minority stake in financial communications multinational FGS, valuing the group at $1.43 billion. FGS, led by chairman Roland Rudd, was founded through the merger of London-based Finsbury, Frankfurt-based Hering Schuppener and Washington-based Glover Park Group in 2020.