Bell Pottinger crisis team sets up with Westminster rival

The crisis communications team at the disgraced Bell Pottinger PR firm is setting up a major new operation within the public affairs firm Pagefield.

Former Bell Pottinger director Stuart Leach will next month launch a joint venture with Pagefield founder Mark Gallagher and bring 18 of his former 23-strong team, the Evening Standard has learned.

It is the biggest move of a unit from the old Bell Pottinger, which collapsed last month after a scandal over inflaming racial tensions in South Africa.

The team will set itself up as a standalone company under the Pagefield corporate umbrella. Ex-barrister Leach and Gallagher registered a business at Companies House called Pagefield Global Counsel in August, a month before Bell Pottinger’s collapse. Leach left in July.

Pagefield boasts US ambassador Sir Christopher Meyer among its advisers. It is best known for corporate PR, campaigning and public affairs work in Westminster. The Bell Pottinger alumni work with clients in crisis situations or legal tussles, and on international affairs.

Sources said Pagefield management had established the newcomers were not involved in the South African scandal.

The Bell Pottinger business has been scattered. Its Asian arm’s chief Piers Pottinger has set up on his own. Senior partners John Sunnucks and Tim Collins have set up a new outfit called Vico Partners, which worked for private-equity firm Greybull on the collapse of its Monarch airline.