Atomic PR acquired by Huntsworth

On Wednesday, March 23, AtomicPR was acquired by our global joint venture partner, Huntsworth, plc in a deal capped at $50 million with $13.3 million in cash up front. Atomic will be associated with Grayling, Huntsworth’s largest global agency, with whom we will open additional Atomic offices in Europe and Asia, and will serve as a US home for Grayling clients from other parts of the world.

Atomic PR in the San Francisco Chronicle

AtomicPR in Reuters

Atomic PR in the Wall Street Journal

Huntsworth is the second largest independent PR consultancy in the world, with clients ranging from Skype and Google, to McDonald’s and British Airways. They have 70 offices in 41 countries around the world - but are not a large presence in the US. They are also rapidly becomming more digitally and analytically savvy. That’s where we fit in. Atomic needs to expand its footprint quickly outside the US into Europe, the middle East and AsiaPac, and that’s where they come in. We’ve been in a JV in London and Munich with them for more than a year, so we know them well - so this isn’t the usual roll-up, but was well thought through over time.

This won’t change anything about how we do things here in the US, but we’ll have more resources overseas quickly. We’ll also have access to other services we don’t provide now that are of interest to a growing number of our clients, such as public affairs through Dutko Grayling. Atomic PR’s founders Andy Getsey and James Hannon are staying on and will continue running the agency the next five years, at least. We aren’t planning on changing anything that isn’t broken, but we continue to aggressively expand our capabilities and are working hard to get better all the time.

Thanks to everyone at Huntsworth and Grayling; it’s good to be part of the family. And thanks to all of our AtomicPR clients for trusting our teams with your programs!