Advice for boards, CEOs, investors and functional leaders on building enterprise value, and the part communications plays in it.
AI is redrawing business models. Geopolitics is reshaping markets. And a reputation built over decades can be lost in a day. For any leadership team, this is a chance to decide what the business, and the function that speaks for it, can deliver.
Investors, boards and buyers are asking whether business models can survive AI. How credibly a company answers shapes how its future is understood and valued. At the same time, AI has made content cheap. Communications must show how it contributes to business outcomes.
Organisations operating across borders face more volatility than at any point in generations. Political instability and shifting alliances in a polarised world are making decisions harder and their consequences less predictable.
Expectations on conduct, purpose and transparency have never been higher. Information now spreads faster than any organisation can respond. A misstep can destroy in days what took years to build.
Nobody yet knows exactly where the industry is heading, so your function has to be built to adapt. That means rethinking your agency relationships, cost base and structure from the ground up. The prize is a bigger role in what comes next. Your board is watching.
Where reputation, leadership and transformation drive the value of your business, you need to know what diligence will find before it starts looking. Building that view too late, or relying on one that is not independent, will cost you value when the moment comes.
The business can sell more, grow faster or command more value.
That value holds when circumstances change.
More of the value created stays with the business or is realised by its owners.
The opportunity belongs to the function or business built to create, protect and capture value as a matter of course.
At the speed and scale the moment demands.
Ask it of every decision that matters. The best decisions do all three. Most do one or two. The gap is where value is lost.
What grows?
How communications creates value when AI has made content cheap and attention is scarce.
Fox Meridian works directly with the leadership team on how communications contributes to growth, and redesigns the function that delivers it: what it is for, what it costs and what it is worth. It also resets how the function works with agencies and partners.
What could destroy it?
How reputation protects value when the licence to operate can be challenged overnight, from anywhere.
Board-level reputational and business advisory, working directly with the senior leadership team on the decisions that determine what the business is worth as pressure builds and after it passes.
Who gets the value?
How reputation and communications influence the gap between what a business is worth and how it is valued.
Fox Meridian assesses how the business’s reputation is understood by investors and buyers, where its strengths and weaknesses lie and what could increase its value. That assessment matters before and during deals, exits and transformations.
The biggest questions in communications need someone who has run the business.
For more than a decade, I led international communications consultancy businesses at scale. As President and CEO of Edelman EMEA, I ran a region of more than 1,500 people across 17 offices, leading substantial growth and a major transformation of its business model.
I served as CMO for Asia Pacific, where I built a fully integrated regional marketing function. As Global Transformation Lead, I designed and delivered a new integrated marketing and communications function across markets and businesses.
In media, I led the Benelux bureau for Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal for years. It taught me to read what a company’s numbers and language are really saying, and to see early how a story will move a market.
I have led businesses through structural disruption, from changing industry economics and AI to major geopolitical upheaval. I have also counselled dozens of clients through major transactions and transformations, and through reputational and leadership challenges.
After decades of leading businesses and teams, I am building Fox Meridian for what comes next in this industry.
Read more about my background on LinkedInFox Meridian is a senior principal at the centre, with specialists brought in for each mandate and technology doing the routine work. Every resource goes to your mandate.
I bring frameworks and tools refined over decades of this work, and I use them where they fit. Every situation is different, so I start by taking the time to understand yours. The recommendation follows what I find.
Three to four at any one time, chosen for fit, scale and significance. I stay selective on purpose, so every mandate gets my full attention.
When a mandate calls for it, I bring in the best available across reputation, transformation, AI, legal and finance. People I have worked with and trust. You get a team shaped around your situation, with one person accountable.
Fox Meridian works alongside the leadership. I take a view, give a direction and own the advice. The person you meet is the person who does the work.
For mandate enquiries, referrals, or a confidential conversation about creating, protecting or capturing value.
advisory@fox-meridian.com →One call. Forty-five minutes. We will know whether and how I can help you create more value for your business.