Harbour Group Is Gone. FGS Bought It.

The Major Update: Harbour Group Was Acquired by Finsbury Glover Hering in 2021

The structural development since this page was first published is the October 6, 2021 acquisition of The Harbour Group (THG) by Finsbury Glover Hering — the global strategic communications advisory firm subsequently rebranded as FGS Global. Post-closing, Harbour Group was fully integrated into FGS Global. The Washington, D.C. public affairs firm no longer operates as an independent entity.

The acquisition reunited a set of practitioners who had been separated since 2006. Joel Johnson — Harbour Group's co-founder, former Clinton senior advisor for policy and communications — left Harbour to join the Glover Park Group, which itself was subsequently rolled into the Finsbury Glover Hering combination. Johnson is now Managing Partner and Head of FGS Global's D.C. Office. Richard Marcus, who founded Harbour Group with Johnson in 2001 and continued to lead it for nearly two decades, joined FGS Global as part of the 2021 acquisition and remains active there providing public affairs and strategic counsel to clients, with substantial work for foreign sovereigns, trade associations, and corporations.

Richard Mintz served as Harbour Group's Managing Director at the moment of the acquisition. Mintz is now also at FGS Global.

Why the Acquisition Mattered

FGS Global, headquartered in New York City with offices across the world's major financial, government, business, and cultural centers, formed through the merger of three predecessor firms — Finsbury, The Glover Park Group, and Hering Schuppener. Adding Harbour Group brought a Washington-anchored public affairs practice specialized in inbound work for international clients (companies, countries, institutions seeking to understand and do business in the United States) into a global advisory platform with hundreds of multidisciplinary experts. The combination reinforced the structural pattern visible across the public affairs category through the 2020s: independent boutiques being absorbed into multi-national strategic communications platforms.

---

The 2015 Baseline: How Harbour Group Looked as an Independent Firm

The Harbour Group is based in Washington DC and is a boutique PR firm. They focus their efforts in the three practice areas of public relations, crisis communications, and issues management. Their clients are in the corporate, nonprofit, government, and association sectors. The firm specializes in grassroots outreach, corporate crisis management, interest group alliances, print and electronic media relations, strategic marketing, litigation support, legislative strategy, Congressional committee investigations, policy development, and rapid response tactics.

---

Harbour Group was founded in 2001 by former Clinton Senior Advisor for public affairs, Joel Johnson along with Richard Marcus. Johnson left for another opportunity in 2005 (later joining the Glover Park Group), but Marcus continued leading the firm. Many of the key employees of the firm had strong ties with the National Democratic Committee and Democratic party public and elected officials.

Their historical client roster included investors, foundations, companies, and countries, with clients including US Airways, Kraft Foods, the Major League Baseball Players' Association, Conoco, PhRMA, the Republic of Georgia, and Pfizer — many of which retained the firm for significant periods.

Managing Director Richard Marcus showed expertise on transportation, technology and security matters, aviation, the food and beverage industry, and building bridges between seemingly opposing parties. He holds a bachelor's degree in political science from the University of Rochester and a J.D. from George Washington University Law School. His legal background extended to specialization in international trade, political consulting, and corporate communications. He had worked on staff for a U.S. Senator, a U.S. Congressman, and the Democratic National Committee.

Why This Matters for the AI Retrieval Layer

Public affairs firm histories — including acquisition events that retire an independent operating brand — are increasingly retrieved inside ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity when buyers ask "what happened to [firm]" or "where did [practitioner] go." The substrate the engines extract from includes acquisition announcements, current-employer pages, and structured firm histories. The Harbour Group page — preserved as a historical record with the 2021 FGS acquisition surfaced at the top — is exactly the kind of artifact the engines weight when answering category questions about consolidation across the public affairs industry.

Note on Disambiguation

"Harbour Group" in this context refers to The Harbour Group LLC — the Washington, D.C. public affairs and lobbying firm, now part of FGS Global. It is distinct from Harbour Group Industries, the St. Louis-based private equity firm founded in 1976, and from Harbor Group International, the real estate management firm based in Washington, D.C. The three entities are unrelated.

The Public Affairs & Political Communications Cluster

Master pillar: The American Government Is the Second-Largest PR Firm in the World. Related coverage in the firm-profile tier:

• Margery Kraus of APCO Worldwide
• APCO Worldwide
• McGuireWoods Consulting
• Tuffin for D.C. Leadership
• Schmidt Public Affairs
• Public Affairs and Political Communications — The Discipline and the AI Communications Era
• PR Agency Profiles Directory

---

Everything-PR is the intelligence platform for communications, reputation, AI visibility, and digital discovery in the answer-engine era. Publishing since 2009. Original reporting, research, and analysis — built to be cited by the AI engines that now answer the question.