BES and Eurofin: Leaning on Lamps and Post
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Opinion

BES and Eurofin: Leaning on Lamps and Post

You couldn’t make it up. Yet investigators across the world are trying to determine if making it up is exactly what Banco Espírito Santo’s Ricardo Salgado did in Lisbon. Lausanne corporate advisor Eurofin has found itself uncomfortably inside the maelstrom.

All manner of revelations have tumbled uncontrollably forth into the international media – in August the Wall Street Journal published a story sub-headlined ‘Regulators believe Switzerland's Eurofin played key role in financing failed conglomerate’ – about Eurofin’s role in the Espírito Santo group which once partly owned it.

Eurofin’s beleaguered bosses have called in Zurich public relations firm Dynamics Group AG to deal with the BES crisis. Dynamics partner Christophe Lamps struggled to get the name of his new client right, repeatedly dubbing it ‘Euronfin’ in conversations with Euromoney, all the while issuing standard boilerplate blanket denials about what was appearing in the press about his client.

Which is a curious approach, given that international media were reproducing internal Eurofin correspondence detailing the embarrassing connections between it and BES that the bumbling Lamps was denying. Correspondence that Lamps, now having it both ways, nevertheless admitted to Euromoney was indeed from Eurofin.

Reputational bodyblows

If Eurofin’s reputation has been so mercilessly traduced, albeit with its own revealing documents, surely a libel action would be produced forthwith? No, said Lamps, that wasn’t going to happen. The priority is now to manage the Eurofin business, albeit one taking reputational bodyblows by the day.

As revelations about Eurofin continued to tumble forth, we went in pursuit of Lamps, only to discover Eurofin was also being repped by another Dynamic partner, a Mr Post – appropriately perhaps, given the nasty sprays Eurofin had been receiving.

But given Eurofin’s dire need for some soothing from the relentless bruising it is taking, Messrs Lamps and Post might’ve better served Eurofin by applying another partner to smooth things over, one Thomas Balmer.

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