Peter Roberts, who directed Hill+Knowlton Strategies’ issues and crisis management unit, has moved to Bell Pottinger in London to head its own I&CM unit.
He was formerly head of communications for BBC News, a tenure that included the 2003 Hutton Report inquiry on the BBC’s coverage of alleged “sexed up” Iraq intelligence.
He left the broadcaster after seven years for H+K in 2008. Roberts also spoke for the BBC on the 2007 kidnapping of journalist Alan Johnston in the Gaza Strip who was held for more than three months.
Group managing director David Wilson alluded to Roberts’ BBC tenure in noting that in a crisis the “audio-visual challenge can be the difference between communications success and failure.”
BP, part of Chime Communications, was enmeshed in its own crisis in December after a series of unflattering articles about the firm ran in the British press.