Management buyout brings fresh blood to the top at Midas PR

A management buy-out at Midas Public Relations has seen new shareholders buying into the business, while a focused expansion into film and TV is planned for the company.

The shareholding group now comprises the company founders, Steven Williams and Tony Mulliken, who remain in the business; Jason Bartholomew, who joined in July as joint c.e.o. from Hachette; directors Nicola Green and Tory Lyne-Pirkis; non-executive director George Lossius; associate director Fiona Marsh and senior manager Anna Guement.

A management board comprising of Williams, Bartholomew, Green and Lyne-Pirkis will be responsible for the day-to-day running of the company which delivers communications for books and publishing, visual arts, festivals and awards, and a smaller number of entertainment clients.

Mulliken will step down as chairman but will continue, as a founder director, to build business within the client base.

Announcing the changes, Bartholomew revealed that the the key growth for Midas would be two-fold: “First, Midas will focus on embedding relationships with our existing clients. Second, we want to expand further into the entertainment and culture sectors. Regarding the Midas brand, we want to be known as the preeminent public relations agency who use our insight and experience to bring your work to the world – whether it’s across publishing, authors, visual arts, festivals, TV, film and beyond.”

Bartholomew (pictured above) told The Bookseller that he hopes his previous experience as rights director for Hachette companies, as well as publishing director of Quercus Books US, will help Midas break further territory in the screen world.

“What I was hoping to do before I came in here was push our work into new territories like film and TV,” he said. “I have lot of background in these from selling rights to film when I was at Hachette. There is a lot of cross-over between selling TV rights and books.”

He told The Bookseller that expansion into film and TV will ensure a stable future for the communications company. “For a long time, Midas was in books and publishing and then expanded into visual arts with clients such as Saatchi, I think that was really brilliant because it spread the risk,” he said. “I think we need to do that, and that will be film and TV, so we keep expanding.”

He said he is particularly interested in the relationship between books and films, the adaptation space. However there are no plans to reduce the number of book-related clients and festivals and fairs will continue to be a major part of the company’s offering.

“I want to expand the books section too. I don’t want to take away from our core and that has always been books and publishing.”

“With my background I want it to keep moving, with more clients in the book world, and expanding generally. I want to expand and get new clients, I don’t have a particular percentage in mind because we have different time-scales for different clients. It will depend on the company and our resources, I don’t want to spread ourselves too thinly.”

There are no current plans to expand the team of 22 employees, he said, except for recruiting for a senior social media manager as part of a newly created role.

Steven Williams, joint c.e.o., of Midas PR, said in a statement: “Tony and I founded Midas in 1990. With the help of successive management and account teams - and a wide variety of terrific clients over 28 years, we are proud that Midas has indeed become the leading independent agency for publishing, culture and the arts.

“It has long been our wish as founders to ensure a stable future for the company. We are delighted to have had the chance over the past two years, assisted by our non-executive director, George Lossius, to have put a plan in place with some great new shareholders and colleagues – and also to have the opportunity to be part of an exciting new chapter for Midas.”