NEW YORK, December 9, 2024 – Burson, the global communications agency purpose-built to create value for clients through reputation, today announced that Matt Reid has joined strategic communications and financial markets advisory firm Burson Buchanan as U.S. CEO, effective December 2. Reid is based in Washington, D.C. and will oversee the expansion of the brand and business in the U.S. market.
Reid uses his deep experience in financial and corporate communications, public affairs and crisis management to provide strategic counsel to clients facing “bet the company” opportunities and threats. His expertise includes managing financial transactions and issues; complex litigation matters and government investigations; policy and regulatory challenges; and major corporate crises. He has also managed communications for numerous corporate acquisitions, mergers and SPAC transactions.
“Businesses are facing pressures from all quarters – both internal and external – that can create high-stakes threats, imperil reputation and undermine financial confidence,” said Corey duBrowa, Global CEO, Burson. “Matt brings a successful three-decade career in advising clients through myriad complexities, opportunities and strategic scenarios to protect and build reputation and optimize valuation. I benefitted from his steady hand and wise counsel during my time as a client and when we were colleagues at WE Communications, and know his considerable expertise will be a tremendous asset to our clients and potential clients as we build Burson Buchanan in the United States.”
Before joining Burson Buchanan, Reid was Managing Director and Head of the Los Angeles office for H/Advisors Abernathy, as well as lead of the firm’s cybersecurity and litigation communications practices. He also contributed to the firm’s capital markets work in the U.S. and its global public affairs efforts. Prior to that, Reid was Managing Director and co-head of the Los Angeles office of Sard Verbinnen & Co. (now FGS Global), where he oversaw mergers & acquisitions, activist defence, executive transitions, crises, regulatory and litigation matters for clients across numerous industries, including technology, life sciences and education. Earlier, he was Senior Vice President, External Affairs for BSA | The Software Alliance, the leading global trade association for the software industry, where he oversaw global communications and government relations. He has also held senior corporate communications and public affairs roles at agencies including WE Communications, FleishmanHillard and GCI Group. He began his career working on high-profile political campaigns.
“Burson Buchanan has a well-earned reputation in the UK across 30 years for helping clients manage issues, markets and corporate reputation to build stakeholder confidence and facilitate innovation and growth,” said Reid. “As a boutique strategic communications and financial markets advisory firm within Burson Group, we offer highly specialized expertise, backed by the resources of the global communications agency that set the gold standard for reputation management and strategic advisory. I couldn’t be more enthusiastic about what we’ll be able to achieve as we expand Burson Buchanan into the U.S.”
About Burson
Burson is the global communications leader built to create value for clients through reputation. With highly specialized teams, industry-leading technologies and breakthrough creative, we help brands and businesses redefine reputation as a competitive advantage so they can lead today and into the future. Burson is part of WPP (LSE/NYSE: WPP), the creative transformation company. Learn more at www.bursonglobal.com and www.bursonbuchanan.com.
Simon Compton, Associate Partner at Burson Buchanan was delighted to participate in an interview with Neil Shah, Director of Content & Strategy at Edison Group and LSEG’s Issuer Services Marketplace Insights team on how to go about building and maintaining an investor following with the right accompanying Investor Relations and communications plan.
Watch the full interview here.
Representatives from the Burson Buchanan leadership team were delighted to participate in an interview with LSEG’s Issuer Services Marketplace Matters team on the bright future for UK growth companies.
In the interview Bobby Morse, Senior Partner, Helen Tarbet, Partner and Chris Judd, Partner & Head of Sustainability, discuss their views on the topic and explain how Burson Buchanan can help businesses to enhance and manage their reputations.
Watch the full interview here.
Burson Buchanan’s Financial Comms, Sustainability and Creative teams were engaged by Predictive Discovery (ASX:PDI) to once again produce their Annual Report. As Burson Buchanan provides ongoing advisory to the business, the teams were well placed to develop a report that demonstrates the progress the business has made in a year that has seen PDI make significant strides in advancing the Bankan Project swiftly and sustainably towards the development phase.
The ESG section of the report includes details of PDI’s successful completion of their Environmental and Social Impact Assessment (ESIA), stakeholder engagement initiatives, and environmental stewardship efforts. The content particularly highlights PDI’s work with host communities and its commitment to environmental protection.
The report’s design aligns with PDI’s other communications, reflecting how ESG is integrated across the business, whilst also being a visually distinct document that emphasises the Company’s purpose.
View the report here.
On 10 October, Burson Buchanan were pleased to sponsor and host The Geological Society Business Forum event on Public & Investor Relations in the Extractive Industries – How to Attract and Manage Investors in a Social Media Driven World with speakers Ben Romney, Partner, Energy at Burson Buchanan and Alex Stella, Managing Director of Investor Hub on an engaging Q&A panel moderated by Mark Steeves.
The event brought together leaders of listed and private resources businesses to discuss how to utilise the multiple channels of information to promote their investment propositions and reach a wider stakeholder audience. With social media playing an increasingly important role in business communications, supporting the promotion of everything from brand awareness to recruitment and crisis situations, it is essential that companies understand how to use these tools, and create the short-form informative content increasingly sought by shareholders, to achieve their communications objectives. During the discussion, the panellists discussed the growing trends from stripped back management videos that help personalise leadership to promote authenticity and build trust with stakeholders, to the pitfalls to be avoided including personal political statements and “over-informality”. Also addressed was the growing role that AI would play as a tool for both IR and the investor community, with AI tools being used by investors to assess the tone and language of earnings calls to inform their investment decisions.
A key takeaway for the audience was that companies should take ownership of their shareholder relationships by using communications tools that gather data and provide analytics so that companies can understand the composition of their share register and target prospective investors directly rather than relying on external service providers. Another concluding note was that these newer communications tools (social channels, short form content, AI) complement the more traditional channels (press releases, presentations, business and trade media and sell-side research) to ensure a wider reaching and coherent communications strategy that supports business objectives, and that failure to understand and integrate them into your communications activities would reduce a company’s chances of competing for growth capital.
Burson Buchanan has just produced and published the latest programme of stakeholder communications for The Rank Group plc.
This integrated suite extended our previous ESG mandate to include best practice advisory, content development, design and production of a new Group Corporate Website, Annual Report and Sustainability Report.
Notable features within the project the scripting, storyboarding, art-direction and editing of a new corporate movie and series of management interviews for the website, along with the development of a Double Materiality Assessment and Net Zero Pathway for the Sustainability Report.
The programme provides the client with a progressive platform of consistent corporate information to engage audiences across a range of channels.
View the Sustainability report here
Burson Buchanan is delighted to have joined the London Stock Exchange Group Marketplace. This new membership provides an excellent opportunity to further engage with the London Stock Exchange’s global audience of members and forge meaningful relationships with a variety of different businesses.
Joining firms active in a number of sectors including financial and legal services, cyber security solutions, analytics and transaction services, Burson Buchanan adds decades of capital markets expertise and reputation advisory solutions to the wide variety of corporate services on offer on the marketplace.
The page highlights just some of our areas of focus.
- Communications
- M&A
- IPOs
- Crisis Communications
- Sustainability
- Creative
With over 90 retained clients, from FTSE 100 to privately owned companies of all sizes, our 45 specialist consultants advise businesses on how to communicate effectively with their target stakeholders in order to optimise their valuations.
Burson Buchanan looks forward to taking part in the active exchange of thought leadership on the Marketplace platform including panels, articles and conferences. A video with senior members of the team is in production and will be published on Marketplace soon.
“We are pleased to announce Burson Buchanan’s latest partnership with the London Stock Exchange’s Marketplace as the latest new member of this exciting platform. We thoroughly look forward to contributing to the significant volume of influential thought leadership generated through leveraging expertise from across the business and look forward to providing further updates on our website and Marketplace page.”
Bobby Morse, Senior Partner
Please visit our profile page to learn more about how we are adding value to companies in all aspects of their capital markets reputation: https://www.lsegissuerservices.com/marketplace/BursonBuchanan
VAALCO Energy, Inc. is an independent energy company with production, development and exploration assets in Africa and Canada. Buchanan’s ESG team provides ongoing advisory to VAALCO on sustainability management and reporting.
In 2023, we developed a materiality framework for the business, informed by internationally recognised ESG standards, in order to capture the risk and opportunity universe for the enlarged Group. The resulting materiality register is the product of a robust process which engaged a complete cross section of the Group and enables enhanced oversight of and reporting on their most material issues.
Buchanan was also tasked with creating and delivering VAALCO’s 2023 Sustainability Report. Crucially, the report has greatly expanded upon the disclosure for each individual operating location, representing the transition from a single operating entity to a Group with assets across multiple jurisdictions.
The report includes forecasting VAALCO’s exposure climate-related legislative risk and presents the most detailed Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) reporting to date. This reflects our work to significantly step up the business’ understanding on climate change-related risks and opportunities.
Buchanan’s ESG and Design teams worked closely with individuals from across the Group to deliver this report in order to demonstrate VAALCO’s strong commitment to achieving operational excellence in all regions.
Click here to read the report.
Commenting on our relationship with VAALCO, Jim said, “A company could not ask for a better partner in navigating its sustainability journey than the team at Buchanan. They have very deep knowledge of reporting frameworks and regulatory requirements, clearly understand the complexities of large global energy companies, exhibit strong creative skills, pay attention to important details, and advise how best to transparently communicate changing situations. Their insights reflect the reality that the financial community remains a main audience for data on corporate sustainability performance and they give counsel to ensure the focus is on how sustainability is adding value.”
Jim Schwartz, Director of Sustainability and Regulatory Compliance, VAALCO
Members of the Buchanan Investment Companies team were pleased to attend the Annual Investment Funds conference hosted by the London Stock Exchange Group.
There was a compelling agenda for the event that was also extremely well attended by the industry. The conference kicked off with an excellent keynote speech by Peter Harrison, Group Chief Executive of Schroders who set the tone for a day of discussion and debate. This was then followed by multiple panels where industry leaders answered relevant questions and discussed the pertinent topics of the day, ranging from changing institutional allocations, to the future landscape for alternative assets and much more.
The panel discussions were supplemented by Q&A sessions as well as a fireside chat with Tom Slater, the Manager of Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust. The conference then wrapped up with a powerful address from Baroness Bowles of Berkhamsted, Non-Executive Director, London Stock Exchange plc, on the defence of the Investment Companies industry in response to external pressures.
It was excellent to see the sector come together to celebrate the strengths of the sector, as well as some of its headwinds with insightful discussions and a shared feeling of positivity about the future.
Find out more about the event.
Buchanan was delighted to join Hunting plc, the precision engineering group, in celebrating its 150th year since it was founded in 1874 by Charles Samuel Hunting.
https://huntingplc.com/news/celebrating-150-years-of-excellence
Hunting is a business that has adapted and diversified through multiple energy, industrial and technological transitions, beginning in shipping and through the 20th Century diversifying into oil field services.
Today Hunting is a leading precision engineering firm with a global footprint, with offices and operating bases across the world, supplying high-specification products to the oil and gas, geothermal and CCS sectors, and also using its advanced manufacturing capabilities to build parts for the defence, aerospace and medical sectors (clients include Space X, Blue Origin, Pratt & Whitney.).
In 2023, Hunting unveiled its ambitious Hunting 2030 Strategy at its CMD at the London Stock Exchange, aimed at driving robust growth and enhanced shareholder returns through the decade’s end and beyond. This strategic roadmap, rooted in innovation and market adaptability, seeks to maintain relevance in today’s dynamic markets while positioning the Company for success in the future.
The Buchanan Energy team works closely with Hunting to help define and position Hunting’s investment case, highlighting robust financial results and an exciting forward outlook with a strong platform for growth in the energy transition.
