Global Counsel to be placed into administration
Global Counsel’s 130 staff have been informed that the lobbying company founded by Peter Mandelson will be placed into administration as soon as tomorrow.
CityAM understands that despite a number of clients deciding to stay with the firm, the loss of business following the former US ambassador’s fall from grace has been substantial.
A significant number of redundancies are now expected at the consultancy that until recently advised blue-chip firms such as Barclays, Phoenix Group and GSK.
Mandelson has had no involvement in Global Counsel work for several months prior to taking up his Washington role in 2025, and his stake was recently fully divested as the company scrambled to contain the fallout.
His co-founder, Benjamin Wegg-Prosser, also resigned amid the scandal, after Department of Justice emails revealed him to have met with Epstein at his house in New York while the financier was under house arrest.
But despite both co-founders leaving the shop, its revamped leadership team has concluded that Mandelson’s legacy makes it impossible for the once-respected City firm to continue.
“After an exhaustive review of the options available to the company, the Board of Global Counsel has decided to ask the UK courts to appoint Interpath as an administrator to take control of and realise the assets of the company,” the firm said in a statement. “To be clear, this will no longer be business as usual as the Administrators-in-waiting have already indicated that, in the unlikely event that any ongoing servicing of clients is viable, this will be on a limited basis only.”
Global Counsel’s client exodus
The agency, which was founded in 2010 in the aftermath of Labour’s general election loss, was hit by an exodus of major clients, after CityAM revealed the convicted sex trafficker had played a more substantial role in its early stages than the firm had previously admitted.
It was mentioned more than 800 times in the US government’s recent release of emails, photos and bank statements relating to the paedophile, who died in custody in 2019. Most mentions of the lobbying outfit were correspondence between Mandelson and Epstein unrelated to Global Counsel activities. But the cache of exchanges also showed Epstein had helped source new business leads, advised on corporate strategy, and consulted on a potential sale of the company when it was in its infancy.
Other correspondence from Epstein in March 2011 – years after his 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor – revealed Wegg-Prosser sent a statement, seemingly from a spokesperson for Lord Mandelson, distancing the ex-Labour heavyweight from Epstein.
“Lord Mandelson was in London on 12 and 13 December 2009 prior to travelling to India on government business, and no such meeting was requested by him,” Wegg-Prosser wrote.
“Lord Mandelson was introduced to Mr Epstein a decade before by his then partner Ghislaine Maxwell who, along with her father and other members of her family, Lord Mandelson had known for many years before.”
Global Counsel grew over the 2010s to become one of London’s most renowned political consultancies, helping lobby government on behalf of clients and advising them on the political landscape across dozens of markets. It opened offices in Brussels and the Middle East, and established a presence in much of Asia and North America.
Long before the Epstein files brought about its downfall, it had been criticised by the public relations sector’s industry body for not subscribing to its code of conduct, which prohibits peers from engaging in lobbying activities. It has also weathered several backlashes over its client base. In addition to blue-chip firms like the Premier League and Palantir, it has worked with oligarchs, state-backed Russian oil companies and a defence company with close ties to the Chinese government.
The firm’s rapid fall from grace has also triggered wider scrutiny over lobbying standards in the UK’s world-leading political advisory industry. Earlier this month, CityAM revealed that the chief executive of the PRCA, Sarah Waddington, wrote to every senior lobbying executive in the country urging them not to work with agencies who have not signed up to its code of conduct.