Corporate clients turn to small advisory firms to end public
relations nightmares.
According to Crain’s New York Montieth Illingworth has
advised clients caught up in news scandals including the Bernie Madoff affair,
the Dominique Strauss-Kahn case and the suit filed against photographer Annie
Leibovitz when she defaulted on a restructuring loan. Acting as a combination
of spin doctor, psychologist, management consultant and litigation adviser, Mr.
Illingworth and his four employees at Montieth & Co., a boutique
"special situations" consultancy in Manhattan, have done their job
well if no one is aware they have done it at all.
In a previous decade, headline-grabbing business and
corporate crises were typically managed by large public relations firms and
management advisory consultancies. But in today's complex media universe, where
major stories are broken on Twitter, the specialized expertise and lack of
bureaucracy at smaller special-situations firms puts them in hot demand.
"Montieth has a very detailed, integral understanding
of litigation—what matters and what doesn't," said attorney Josh Epstein,
chair of litigation and managing partner in the New York City office of
SorinRand, who has hired Mr. Illingworth's firm numerous times to manage media
issues on sensitive finance-related cases. "He's also very nimble in a way
a larger firm couldn't be."
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