Unlock the Editor’s Digest free of charge
Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favorite tales on this weekly publication.
Former UK prime minister Lord David Cameron is in talks to hitch the regulation agency and lobbyist DLA Piper as a marketing consultant, the most recent of a number of personal sector roles he has taken within the wake of his departure from the federal government final yr.
Cameron would advise the regulation agency and its leaders on geopolitical dangers, in response to two individuals with information of the transfer, who cautioned that particulars of the function should not but finalised.
DLA Piper, ranked the world’s third-largest regulation agency by income, is a registered lobbyist within the US and the UK, although one of many individuals mentioned the previous premier wouldn’t be concerned in lobbying.
“He’s an extremely clever and curious one who’s going to play an necessary function advising [the firm] on totally different geographies and geopolitical dangers,” the particular person mentioned.
Cameron was prime minister of the UK’s Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition from 2010 to 2015 after which led the following Conservative authorities till he resigned after dropping the Brexit referendum in 2016. He spent a number of years within the personal sector earlier than returning to authorities for a brief stint as overseas secretary from 2023 to 2024.
In 2021 he suffered reputational injury when he acquired caught up in a serious scandal after the FT revealed the dimensions of his lobbying for Greensill Capital, a failed provide chain finance firm
Cameron lobbied ministers and civil servants 56 instances to attempt to safe Greensill entry to state-run Covid-19 debt schemes.
Greensill’s collapse in 2021 led to prison investigations within the UK, Germany and Switzerland. Cameron’s conduct will not be regarded as the topic of these investigations. A committee of UK lawmakers mentioned he confirmed a “vital lack of judgment” in his work for the corporate however didn’t break lobbying guidelines.
The transfer to DLA Piper would require approval from Britain’s Advisory Committee on Enterprise Appointments. Acoba guidelines require ministers and senior civil servants to safe clearance for 2 years after leaving the federal government, to decrease the potential of privileged data getting used for private achieve.
The physique can not block an appointment, however it could advise that the function is “unsuitable”.
A DLA Piper spokesperson confirmed discussions have been below approach and declined to remark additional. A spokesman for Cameron didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
The put up can be the most recent Cameron has taken since he left authorities final yr. He’s advising Finback Funding Companions, a non-public fairness agency based and chaired by Jeb Bush, the brother of former US president George W Bush. He’s additionally an adviser to London-based hedge fund Caxton and Florida-based freight funds enterprise PayCargo.
He has undertaken a string of talking engagements world wide. In March he gave public addresses in Chicago, Switzerland, Singapore and Hong Kong.
DLA Piper seems on the UK lobbying register due to its public affairs work. The corporate says it supplies “legislative and parliamentary advocacy and public companies and . . . strategic communications recommendation”.
Cameron can be one in all a number of former political and diplomatic figures advising the regulation agency. Former Center East peace envoy George Mitchell is a marketing consultant to DLA Piper, and was beforehand chair.
DLA Piper was established twenty years in the past by way of the merger of UK-based DLA and two US-based companies, Piper Rudnick and Grey Cary Ware & Freidenrich. It operates by way of a Swiss verein, a authorized construction that permits its places of work world wide to undertake the identical model however hold funds separate.