Inside the secretive firm helping Labour to woo the City

The cream-coloured Mayfair townhouse that serves as the headquarters of Hakluyt gives little away from the outside, other than a brass plaque bearing the company’s name. 

But that is just how bosses at the secretive firm like things run given the discreet nature of their work. 

Founded by a group of former MI6 spies after the Cold War, the advisory and consultancy firm – which takes its name from Richard Hakluyt, the Elizabethan geographer – gained a reputation at one stage for recruiting old spooks who wanted to top up their pensions. 

Today, however, the “about us” page on Hakluyt’s website reads more like a who’s who of the establishment, boasting former chairmen of multinational companies, retired diplomats, and globetrotting bankers. 

For a large fee, the firm will use powerful connections to gather intelligence for clients on the knottiest of corporate or geopolitical problems, before packaging it up in a succinct and easy-to-read analysis. 

Hakluyt claims to work with 40pc of the world’s largest companies and three-quarters of the top 20 private equity firms: “For more than 25 years, leaders of many of the world’s most prestigious companies and most successful investment firms have turned to us for the judgement, insights and advice we provide in a wide range of situations.”

And now, if reports are to be believed, Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party has joined the list of organisations seeking a helping hand.

Amid the Opposition’s continued push to woo businesses, the consultancy has been approached to facilitate meetings between Labour and senior executives, according to Bloomberg. 

The networking has been played down by Hakluyt, which insists it does not take on political clients, while Labour has declined to comment.

Yet tapping into the firm’s network could be a shrewd move, with Sir Keir likely to encounter a host of familiar faces, as well as new ones. 

Hakluyt is chaired by Lord Deighton, the influential businessman and former minister in David Cameron’s government, who is also chairman of Heathrow Airport and the Economist Group. 

He is one of several high-powered figures on the payroll, alongside former Unilever boss and chairman Niall FitzGerald, immunologist and government adviser Professor Sir John Bell, former HSBC chairman and current Abrdn chairman Sir Douglas Flint, former GCHQ director Sir Iain Lobban, former Sony chairman Shuzo Sumi and Mark Wiseman, a former managing director at Blackrock, all of whom are members of the international advisory board.

Meanwhile, recent hires from the world of politics include Dan Rosenfield, a former civil servant who served as Boris Johnson’s chief of staff, Sir Oliver Robbins, the civil servant who was Theresa May’s “Brexit sherpa” and Jamie Hope, a former security advisor to Liz Truss. 

Chris Inglis, a former deputy director of the US National Security Agency and Joe Biden’s first National Cyber Director, joined last month.

Look closely, and you will also find several links with the Labour Party. 

Varun Chandra, Hakluyt’s media-savvy managing director, has links to Labour and worked at Lehman Brothers before helping Sir Tony Blair set up his old advisory firm.

Others at the firm include Baroness Vadera, a former Labour minister and economic adviser to Gordon Brown, and Emily Benn, a granddaughter of Tony Benn who worked for Jonathan Powell, Blair’s former chief of staff. 

Connections like these are in strong demand as British businesses seek to align themselves with the party most likely to win the next election, says Dominic Church, managing director at WA Communications. 

“What we’re seeing is a Labour Party that is actively pro-business and is courting business,” Church says. “Clients want to understand what Labour’s policy positions are and what the direction of travel is – and there is a big appetite for meetings.

“In that respect, it’s not just public affairs firms like WA that are acting as an interface between Labour and businesses but also lots of consultancy firms, law firms and advisory firms too.”

Despite the report on Tuesday, however, Hakluyt denies that it would work with Labour or any political party directly. 

A source close to the firm insists that although it has convened past meetings attended by senior Labour politicians, along with other guests, they were not set up on behalf of Labour. 

That may be no bad thing for Labour’s finances either, given the notoriously high fees Hakluyt is said to charge. 

One source familiar with the consultancy firm says they are “expensive – ludicrously expensive”.

“They are a little like McKinsey, they’ll go and do a lot of digging and provide you with a report if you are a big corporate decision-maker,” the source adds. 

Another executive at a rival once told the Financial Times: “I always joke that they [Hakluyt] put an extra zero on the bill.”

In a rare interview years ago, one Hakluyt insider said: “We are there to answer specific questions — what the real agenda is, who is in whose pocket and what is the role of certain people.”

One person who works in the legal profession, and has had dealings with Hakluyt’s nature of work, compares it to intelligence gatherers such as K2 Integrity and G3, pointing out that although they are surrounded by mystique, what they do is above-board and tends to involve preparing high-level summaries for clients.

“There’s a bit of a formula,” the lawyer says. “They are usually packed with former spooks and have boards full of lords and ladies of the realm.

“The spooks gather intelligence and the lords and ladies ensure it has respectability.”

In Hakluyt’s case, the firm’s rare excursions into the spotlight have occasionally added to its opaque image. 

The company was linked in 2011 to Neil Heywood, a British businessman whose sudden death in China triggered suspicion. 

Heywood had worked as an occasional consultant for Hakluyt and his death was blamed by Chinese authorities on alcohol poisoning, despite not having a reputation for heavy drinking. His body was rapidly cremated without a postmortem examination.

At one stage, it was suggested by Wang Lijun, a former Chongqing police chief and friend of Heywood’s, that he may have been poisoned over a business dispute.

Meanwhile, Hakluyt’s investigations have not always gone to plan either. In 2002, one of the firm’s reports was at the centre of a High Court libel case involving allegations that were described in court as akin to “the plot for the latest James Bond novel”.

Scottish oil firm Ramco had hired Hakluyt to investigate Czech tycoon Karel Komarek and his father. It produced a report in 2000 detailing rumours of corruption and even alleged links to the murder of Jan Ducky, a Slovak politician involved in energy privatisation. Word of the unsubstantiated claims reached pages of Czech newspapers and Komarek Jr. He flatly denied Hakluyt’s findings and sued for libel in London.

When the dispute came to trial in 2002 at the High Court the allegations were presumed to be false because Ramco and Hakluyt did not try to prove them. Komarek’s libel claim nevertheless failed after the judge ruled there was no dishonesty or improper motive by the defendants. Disappointed, the 33-year-old could only complain “they have never been willing to apologise or to stop making the allegations”. He continues to deny them completely.

In another case, the firm was said to have hired a German agent to spy on Greenpeace while doing corporate work for Shell and BP in 2001. 

Manfred Schlickenrieder – codenamed “Camus” – was paid thousands of pounds to pose as a left-wing filmmaker while informing on his fellow activists and their plans to carry out protest stunts. 

BP and Shell have always insisted they knew nothing about the operation.

With an election not far away, Sir Keir may soon require such priceless intelligence himself. 

If he becomes Prime Minister, the Labour leader has suggested he will reopen one of the most thorny issues in politics for decades: the UK’s Brexit deal with the EU.

Luckily for him – or unluckily, depending on your standpoint – Sir Oliver “Olly” Robbins, the former Brexit negotiator under Theresa May, has been working at Hakluyt since March. 

Robbins is understood to be advising Labour on an informal basis already. He is also being lined up for a senior role in government should the party romp to victory, according to reports.

On Tuesday, Hakluyt gave a typically sparse reply when asked if it was working with Labour.

“The Labour Party is not one of Hakluyt’s clients. We do not work for political parties,” a spokesman said.

UPDATE:  This article has been amended at the request of Mr Komarek to emphasise that the allegations contained in the report by Hakluyt concerning Karel Komarek and his father have never been substantiated and Karel Komarek and his father continue to strenuously deny the allegations.