At its meeting on 5 November, the APPC Management Committee met representatives of Burson-Marsteller and Edelman to discuss media reports alleging breaches of the APPC Code of Conduct; specifically failure to register a client on the APPC Register.

Burson-Marsteller was represented at the meeting by Gavin Grant (Chairman), Jonathan Jordan (Managing Director) and Adrian Talbot (Finance Director and Compliance Officer). The APPC Management Committee listened to BM’s account of the report in The Observer and concluded that, at the time in question, the client had not been a public affairs client and thus did not have to be reported in the APPC Register. The Management Committee advised Burson-Marsteller to always err on the side of caution when declaring clients on the register and to embrace the spirit of transparency required by the APPC Code of Conduct.

Edelman was represented by Michael Burrell (Vice Chairman Europe), Susan Eastoe (Deputy CEO UK) and Alex Bigg (Managing Director of UK Public Affairs). Edelman admitted that they had failed to register the client with APPC and repeated their apology for this oversight. Edelman outlined the remedial actions they had now taken to improve their internal procedures and to ensure such a failure did not re-occur in the future. Given the remedial action taken the APPC were satisfied that no further breach would occur but agreed to further review the effectiveness of Edelman’s new procedures in six months’ time.

There will be a meeting of APPC Compliance Officers on 20th November to discuss complicance procedures and best practice.

15 October 2007

Burson Marsteller and Edelman