Politico: Mark Penn’s private equity group to buy PR firm SKDK
SKDKnickerbocker, the Washington PR firm with deep ties to Democrats, is being bought by Mark Penn’s investment firm.
Penn, a former pollster and political strategist, worked on Bill Clinton’s 1996 campaign with Bill Knapp, a managing director at SKDK. Penn left Microsoft earlier this year to start a Stagwell Group, a private-equity firm focused on digital marketing with backing from Steve Ballmer, the former Microsoft CEO.
SKDK, which also has offices in New York, Albany and Los Angeles, has worked on political and corporate campaigns from Washington State’s ballot initiative on gun background checks to the U.S. Airways merger. Anita Dunn, another managing director, was White House communications director and senior adviser to President Obama’s presidential campaigns. Her husband, Robert Bauer, was Obama’s White House counsel.
“Stagwell is putting together a really exciting group of best-in-class companies and we think this is a huge opportunity to work together with sister firms in the future,” SKDK Managing Director Josh Isay said. “It’s a great opportunity for us to continue to operate our company the way it’s been operated and at the same time broaden our horizons.”
