Parker hands shares to Brunswick partners

Alan Parker, the City's leading spin doctor, has been advising most of the FTSE 100's chief executives for years on how best they should present their companies' share issues and such like. Now, the publicity-shy Mr Parker is restructuring his company with a share issue of its own to help keep his 44 partners happy in their work.

Mr Parker is issuing shares in Brunswick for the first time in its 17-year history after rapidly expanding the company (critics might say at too great a cost). Brunswick now has offices in locations such as New York and Paris. The company has also branched out into broadcasting with a business called Cantos, which relays chief executives' pronouncements directly to investors, bypassing, in theory, the need for newspapers.

Mr Parker is reforming Brunswick into a limited liability partnership, or LLP, based in Delaware in the US and will see his holding in the company fall from 80 per cent to about 50 per cent.

Partners such as James Rubin, the former US State Department official will benefit from the structure. Mr Parker is adamant, however, that the move has not been brought about as a result of pressure from partners. Neither is he planning to sell the business or float it on the stock market.