Having sold his Dublin-based strategic communications group Red Flag Global to New York-based Ankura Consulting Group earlier this month for a reported €45 million, its founder Karl Brophy is expecting substantial growth for the company in the next few years.
“I think we’ll be a lot bigger,” he said in an interview with Inside Business, a podcast from The Irish Times. “Every project and every issue that Ankura broadly deal with, they will interrogate if they need a strategic communications element and, of course, I’m going to say they do. So we will be bringing on more talent across the board, more specialist talent in a lot of different areas.”
Red Flag has 65 consultants and annual revenues of about €13 million. Mr Brophy revealed that he used €150,000 from a financial settlement with Independent News & Media in 2012, following a High Court case related to his dismissal by the media group earlier that year, to fund Red Flag.
Mr Brophy was director of corporate affairs and content development at INM (now known as Mediahuis Ireland) from January 2011 to late 2012, but departed in the wake of Denis O’Brien effectively taking control of the business following a drawn-out battle with Tony O’Reilly and his family.
“I’m an accidental entrepreneur. I set up a company because I had to. I didn’t have any other prospects or options,” he said. “I was going to stay in Ireland. [And] not many people want to use a PR guy who has clearly alienated the largest media group in the country.”
“Landing Google really put us on the map”: Karl Brophy on the success and sale of Red Flag
His first client was the Union of Students in Ireland. “Our job was to try to save the maintenance grant for students. We successfully saved the grant. I can’t remember what the fee for the job was but it wasn’t large. And we’ve just grown from there.”
While basing himself in Ireland, Mr Brophy’s ambitions were global, and Red Flag established offices in London, Brussels, Washington DC and Cape Town.
[ Red Flag Consulting sold with expected €33m payout to founder Karl BrophyOpens in new window ]
Winning a mandate with Google was the firm’s “big breakthrough” moment. “When we landed Google in Brussels for some of their big issues and campaigns, we knew we were on the map. They don’t hire idiots. They really wanted to work with us and we continue to work with them to this day.”
Mr Brophy is set to receive €33 million from the sale of Red Flag, although 40 per cent of that sum is contingent on earnouts over the next four years. He said the money would be invested for now and that he would probably take his family on a “fun” holiday.
“It is surreal the idea that there’s a wodge of cash sitting there. It’s more a security blanket … than something that we talk about at home to any extent. Very happy to have it.”
Mr Brophy confirmed that a High Court legal dispute with Mr O’Brien dating back to 2015 remains live.
Mr O’Brien is suing Red Flag and a number of people who worked for it over the contents of a dossier which, he says, Red Flag prepared on him in an effort to injure his commercial and business interests. The claims are denied.
“There have been periodic flurries of movement in that case but it will be 10 years old in October,“ Mr Brophy said. It’s fine now … it’s just something that’s there. It was much more stressful in 2015/2016.”
