Bell Pottinger does an 'Andersen'

It is all over fro Bell Pottinger, as a PR firm having your reputation besmirched (for entirely accurate an fair reasons), really is the end. They can go on about keeping clients etc, but nearly all their major accounts will be firing them today and that will be that. There will be no money to keep the payroll going and then there maybe spurious lawsuits to pay for with no cash to be found.


Stick a fork it in, it's done.


It is very reminiscent of the 2001/2 Enron scandal that ended Arthur Andersen as a global accounting business. They got caught colluding with Enron and that was that, all the clients left and the business was forced to do mini-mergers country by country with other firms, in the UK they joined Deloitte.


But this is a very good thing overall, you may think the UK losing a leading PR agency is a bad thing, but it really shows the rule of law in action and that immoral and irresponsible behaviour has consequences. At a time when all things British are being undermined by the EU, it is a strong signal that the UK remains a strong, rules-based Western democracy. Compare and contrast with South Africa where the people who hired the firm face no consequences and just laugh at the outcome.


Hopefully the better people at Bell Pottinger will get new jobs quickly enough and the world can move on, these experiences tend to be cathartic for an industry overall when the regulators and rules are driven to act.