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Sard Verbinnen & Co. has acquired Oakhill Communications, the London-based strategic communications, PA/crisis shop that serves FTSE companies, non-profits and high net worth individuals.
Oakhill Founders Craig Leviton and Lee Petar are now SVC managing directors and co-heads of the UK PA group
Leviton has more than 25 years of PA/corporate communications experience. In 1998, he joined LLM Communications, which was sold to Financial Dynamics in 2005. In 2009, he launched Heathcroft Communications, which he sold to Teneo in 2013. He established Oakhill with Petar in 2015.
Petar began his more than 20-year PR career at LSA before working at BSMG and Weber Shandwick. He co-founded Tetra Strategy in 2007 and then teamed with Leviton to establish Oakhill.
“Throughout their 20-plus year careers in public affairs and communications, Craig and Lee have distinguished themselves with intelligent counsel, deep relationships with clients, and the ability to execute on complex assignments,” George Sard and Paul Verbinnen said in a statement.
They called Oakhill “a natural expansion of our integrated public affairs practice, which is increasingly critical to achieving our clients’ objectives around the world.”
SVC PA has more than 30 staffers under the leadership of Bruce Haynes, who said many of his US and Asia-based clients have been looking for representation in Britain. “Oakhill increases our ability to provide seamless counsel and execution support to them all,” he said.
Public Policy Holding Company registered 23.8 percent Q3 growth to $48.8M, with organic growth contributing 4.5 percent and the balance driven by merger & acquisition activity.
Publicis Groupe reported 3.1 percent in Q3 growth to $4B, sparked by a 3.6 percent jump North America, its biggest market.
WPP suffered a 10.2 percent drop in 1H revenues to $6.7B and a 47.8 percent plunge in operating profit to $297M.
Interpublic reported Q2 net revenues dropped 6.6 percent to $2.2B and operating income tumbled 23.4 percent to $243.7M. 
WPP has adopted a gloomier profit and sales forecast due to a deteriorating Q2 financial performance triggered by weak client spending as companies cope with the challenging economic backdrop.
