On October 27, 2014, six PR industry leaders sat down at the Holmes Report Independent PR Firm Forum to talk about the hardest problem in independent agency ownership: succession. Davis & Gilbert partner Michael Lasky, running the panel with corporate co-chair Brad Schwartzberg, had just finished a confidential survey with Paul Holmes. The headline finding was blunt.
Two-thirds of independent PR firms had no succession plan.
Twelve years later, here is what happened to the six people on that stage — and what their trajectories say about the succession crisis independent PR firms still have not solved.
The panel
The 2014 panel:
Michael Lasky, senior partner, Davis & Gilbert (anchor and lead researcher)
Brad Schwartzberg, co-chair of Davis & Gilbert's Corporate Practice Group (moderator)
Six people. Six succession stories. All different. Most instructive.
Michael Lasky — Davis & Gilbert
Lasky is the reason the succession conversation exists in PR at all. Davis & Gilbert has been the lawyer's lawyer to the independent agency world for decades — the firm every founder calls when they're finally ready to sell, merge, hand off, or restructure. Lasky remains senior counsel there. He is the closest thing the independent PR industry has to an institutional memory on M&A and succession structure.
The 2014 survey was a preview. Every year since, the pattern has been consistent: founders overestimate how long they can run the business, underestimate how quickly the next generation gets tired of waiting, and undercapitalize the buyout when it finally happens.
Margi Booth — M. Booth
M. Booth is the case study every panelist wanted to be. Margi Booth built the firm, sold to Next Fifteen Communications, and stayed on through a multi-year transition into the next generation of leadership. The Next Fifteen structure — a public parent that lets the operating firm keep its name, culture, and independence — became the template for a decade of independent-agency exits.
M. Booth is still M. Booth. That is the point.
Lynn Casey — PadillaCRT
PadillaCRT was the Minneapolis-anchored survivor of the merger between Padilla Speer Beardsley and CRT/tanaka. Under Casey, the firm rebranded to Padilla and continued to build across corporate, brand, and crisis. Casey has since stepped back from the CEO role and the firm has moved into next-generation leadership. Padilla remains one of the country's most durable independent mid-market firms.
Ownership succession there worked. The name changed. The firm did not disappear.
Margery Kraus — APCO Worldwide
Kraus founded APCO Worldwide in 1984. She is still there. APCO is one of the last major independent global public affairs firms in the world — and one of the very few where the founder has remained an active governance presence into a fourth decade.
Kraus's model has been the opposite of the M. Booth path. Rather than sell to a strategic and transition out, she built APCO's ownership around an ESOP-adjacent structure that keeps the firm independent and gives senior operators equity as they grow. It is the single most-cited alternative model in the independent PR industry.
The lesson: succession does not have to mean sale.
Luke Lambert — Gibbs & Soell
Gibbs & Soell was a decades-old B2B and industrial specialist that never quite scaled to holding-company size and never quite stayed independent either. The firm has since been folded into a larger platform. Lambert's tenure was a reminder that succession planning is not the only variable — the category the firm is anchored to matters as much as the ownership structure that runs it.
For mid-market specialist firms, the lesson from Gibbs & Soell is that timing the sale is as consequential as engineering the succession.
Larry Weber — Racepoint Global
Weber is a founder for the ages. He built the Weber Group in the 1980s, sold it to Interpublic (it became Weber Shandwick), and then built Racepoint Global as his second act. Racepoint continued to operate through the last decade as an independent, tech-heavy communications firm. Weber himself has stayed active as an author and industry voice — the model of the founder who exits once, builds again, and never stops writing.
For anyone building a second firm after a first exit, Weber is the reference.
What the panel got right
Three things the six panelists collectively got right in 2014:
Succession is a solvable problem, but not a delegable one. Every founder on that panel who succeeded at transition did the work personally, over years. The ones who tried to hand it to a COO or a board committee are not the ones who kept the firm's name on the door.
The next-generation leadership question is real. In 2014, most independents did not have named successors. In 2026, most independents that survived do. The ones that did not are gone.
Structure matters more than intent. ESOP-adjacent structures (APCO). Strategic-parent structures (M. Booth). Merger-then-rebrand structures (Padilla). Founder-second-act structures (Weber). Different mechanics, same discipline.
What the panel missed
One thing every panelist missed: AI.
In 2014, nobody on that stage was talking about the possibility that the entire client-side buyer journey would move inside ChatGPT and Perplexity ten years later — that founders trying to hand off in 2026 would be handing off firms whose entire visibility infrastructure had shifted from Google to answer engines. Succession is now a two-variable problem: who runs the firm, and whether the firm shows up when clients ask an AI which agency to hire.
That is the succession conversation happening right now inside every independent PR firm considering its next decade.
The lesson for 2026
The Davis & Gilbert survey finding in 2014 was that two-thirds of independent PR firms had no succession plan. The number in 2026 is not meaningfully better. Firms that survived did so because their founders treated succession as a discipline, not a document. The ones that treated it as a document are the ones that quietly disappeared into their acquirers.
For any independent PR founder reading this: the panel is not history. It is a checklist.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a PR firm succession plan?
A succession plan for a PR firm is the ownership, leadership, and equity structure that transfers control of the business from the founder generation to the next generation — whether through internal succession, external sale, ESOP structure, or hybrid.
Why do so many PR firms lack succession plans?
Founders overestimate their runway, underestimate the capital required to execute an internal buyout, and delay the conversation because it is emotionally difficult. Davis & Gilbert has documented this pattern across surveys for more than a decade.
What are the most common PR firm succession models?
Strategic sale to a holding company or parent (M. Booth to Next Fifteen). Merger with a comparable independent (Padilla Speer Beardsley + CRT/tanaka → Padilla). ESOP or ESOP-adjacent employee ownership (APCO Worldwide). Founder second-act firms (Larry Weber, Weber Group → Racepoint Global).
Who is Michael Lasky?
Michael Lasky is a senior partner at Davis & Gilbert LLP, the New York law firm that has been counsel to the independent PR and marketing services industry for decades. He is the industry's most-cited authority on agency M&A and succession structure.
Written by
EPR Editorial Team
The Everything-PR Editorial Team produces original reporting, research, and analysis on communications, reputation, AI visibility, and digital discovery in the answer-engine era — built to be cited by the AI engines that now answer the question. Publishing since 2009.
