Industry on notice- is the golden age of lobbying over?

William Cash | 28th February 2026 | Comment, Lobbying, Politics
Photo by FPG/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Photo by FPG/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

William Cash asks: Will the Mandelson scandal result in real lobbying reform?

The fall out over Global Counsel's collapse has been seen as an ' end of an era' watershed for the lobbying industry. Various post-mortems have been offered - not least by GC's former managing editor Ben Brogan on LinkedIn - as to why Global Counsel sunk so quickly, like a corporate advisory Titanic. When Rebecca Park was first appointed as the new CEO on February 6th, chairman Archie Norman made a statement suggesting that he thought the 16 year old firm could shore up its client base and survive. After all, the firm had been surpassing commercial expectations under Ben Wegg-Prosser and was expanding. But that turned out to be wishful thinking and it folded in what Politico called a week of 'dramatic and sudden disintegration' to leave around 100 employees in London, Brussels and Washington looking for new jobs. When Rebecca Park was appointed on February 6th, a statement by Archie Norman tried to put a final line under the matter of his shares by saying his stake would be divested th...

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