Rudd in the money as Finsbury shrugs off recession

Gideon Spanier
6 Oct 2009

City public relations supremo Roland Rudd earned £2.9 million last year as his Finsbury agency prospered despite the credit crunch.

Rudd enjoyed a 27% pay rise, worth an extra £620,000, in his remuneration package, which includes long-term incentive schemes and pension contributions.

Annual accounts filed at Companies House show Finsbury's pre-tax profits rose slightly from £8.7 million to £8.8 million in the year ending 31 December, 2008.

Turnover was also up to £27.5 million, from £26.9 million in 2007, despite the start of the recession and the turmoil after the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

It is understood that this was a near-record performance for Finsbury, thanks in part to a boom in advisory work on merger deals.

Finsbury, regarded as one of the most influential corporate PR firms in the City, advises 27 of the FTSE's top 100 companies.

Clients include Sainsbury's, BSkyB, Vodafone and Royal Bank of Scotland.

Some of Rudd's most high-profile work in 2008 included acting for Lloyds TSB during its takeover of HBOS and advising oligarch Oleg Deripaska over the saga over his Corfu holiday with George Osborne.

Rudd and the other directors on the 10-strong Finsbury board hailed the company's 2008 results as “another year of solid growth and expect this to continue”.

The other nine directors earned £4.1 million between them, the equivalent of £450,000 a head.

Finsbury increased its staffing from 69 to 74 during 2008, paying a total of £13.8 million in wages and pensions — an average of £186,000 each.

Former Financial Times journalist Rudd co-founded Finsbury in 1994 and sold a majority stake in the company to Sir Martin Sorrell's advertising giant WPP in 2001.

Rudd is known for having one of the best contacts books in the business and media worlds. Two of his closest friends are Business Secretary Lord Mandelson and BBC business editor Robert Peston.

A survey by PR Week magazine this year named Rudd as the most powerful public-relations executive in the City, ahead of Brunswick chief Alan Parker and Tulchan founder Andrew Grant.