Written by John Harrington
PRWeek greets Stéphane Fouks, executive chairman of H/Advisors, in the library room of the upmarket Saint James club in central Paris, a short walk from the Arc de Triomphe and the Trocadéro.
It’s a fitting location for this Anglo-French rendezvous. The look is familiar to visitors of classic London members’ clubs, with its leather-bound books and brown hues; the website notes the “muted, typically British atmosphere”.
The conversation is far from muted, thankfully. Fouks is charismatic and full of Gallic charm, but bullish as he discusses the network’s past and future alongside Global co-CEO Neil Bennett; the latter is better known this side of La Manche as CEO of London financial comms mainstay H/Advisors Maitland.
The duo have been key figures in growing H/Advisors, the corporate advisory network owned by French marcomms group Havas, into a significant force.
Founded in 2001 as /amo (named after three founding agencies), the network later rebranded as H/Advisors and now employs more than 1,500 people across 40+ offices in Europe, America, APAC and the Middle East.
Organic growth and acquisitions have both been key – growth is currently around 10 per cent per year, or about six per cent organically. The network, whose UK business includes public affairs shop Cicero, has invested in six agencies this decade, adding Germany’s Gauly in November. Other new markets since 2022 have included Australia, Brussels, Dubai, Portugal, Singapore and Spain.
Collaboration has also grown. The proportion of work shared across more than two agencies has risen from one per cent two years ago to 12.7 per cent now. Fouks expects to hit 15 per cent in 2026. And crucially, the network reached profitability last year.
Says Bennett: “My role working with Stephane is turning a group of agencies to an agency group. It’s been exciting – a lot of work to create that spirit of collaboration.”
For Fouks, H/Advisors has moved from a “club” to a “network” and, more recently, “a brand”.
“Today, we have clients where we work in more than 12 countries, and where we deliver more than nine disciplines. So you see the evolution is incredible, but it is because the market is moving fast.”
“We live in a world… where information is watching, and not reading.”
Shifts
The chairman wastes little time emphasising how much the market has been changing, and how, in his opinion, H/Advisors has “the cultural fit of the new world”. Fouks is keen to differentiate the network from its main rivals, which, he suggests, are disadvantaged by top-down structures dictated from one location.
“In a world of social media where everything goes so fast, you can’t be organised like in the ancient world, with one centre of decision in the US, mainly, and when you have to wait for the wake-up in New York to be able to launch your press release, because you need the correction from New York or the approval from New York. It doesn’t work in the world of today.”
The network’s base in a “medium-sized country” also means no one dominant culture dictates, in contrast to what he calls the “imperialism” of some rivals.
Another differentiator, Fouks says, comes from the network’s heritage in a marketing and advertising group, unlike rivals FGS Global, Teneo, Brunswick and FTI Consulting.
Fouks cites H/Advisors’ work in France ‘upgrading’ the social media and influencers strategy for Renault CEO François Provost and the leadership.
This, he says, is the “modern way to create content and value for the CEO” in the shifting media landscape.
“It doesn’t mean that media disappear, that to do an interview disappears, no. It’s like when television arrived: you do press and you do TV, and now you do social media. It’s one more thing to do. But to understand the grammar of communication, it’s key. And as we want to be the modern network, we are the one and only network in the world to be focused on this type of answer, because we are the only one which is still connected with a global advertising and marketing group.”
Other consultancies may disagree with that, but Fouks doesn’t hold back in citing what, in his view, are weaknesses of competitors. In the chairman’s opinion, Publicis “has two half-networks”; a reference to the holding company owning both Kekst CNC and Publicis Counsel in the same genre as H/Advisors.
Recent years have seen corporate and financial comms consultancies bolster their content-creation capabilities. Fouks argues this has “always [been] in our DNA”.
“In Havas Paris, there were always two legs: one which was content creation, including one of the biggest advertising agencies in France; and the biggest advisory agency in France.
“At the beginning, we were against the stream. To be honest, people considered that our model is complicated. How do you make it work together, creative people and consultants? I really consider that the rest of the competition is running after us.”
Fouks points to H/Advisors’ work in Ukraine, advising the government on video communications as short clips filmed by soldiers have become vital comms tools.
We live in a world, Fouks says, where “information is watching, and not reading”.
“It means that in the era of image, we have to take care of emotions. Because you can say, print is more rational, when image is more emotional.
“So how do you manage the communication of your client, when you have this shift, which is you move from era of rationality – a press release – to an era of emotion, which is a video, a tweet, Insta, a Tiktok?”
Fouks speaks of a “second revolution”: away from a “vertical” media world where only views of “authorised” people are aired publicly, usually via traditional journalism.
“With social media, you move from this vertical world to a horizontal world where everyone is authorised to speak, sometimes in an anonymous way. It’s a big revolution.”
This creates huge challenges around trust and authority. Fouks offers COVID-19-era example: “When you have to work on vaccines, the doctor with his white dress is not absolutely more credible than the guy who is crying with children in his hand on TV.”
He admits the fusion of advisory and advertising is “not perfect” across the network. “We are running after a revolution”, he says, and “sometimes we go too slow”. But Fouks claims the business is “by far in advance of our competitors”, and linked its approach to a recent win with the European Commission, in a brief that spans H/Advisors plus other Havas agencies.
For Fouks, the “frontier” between a consumer issue and a corporate issue has shifted. He highlights a recent corporate crisis in France involving the online Chinese retailer Shein, which was accused of selling sex dolls in the country that looked like children (Shein said it delisted the products when it was made aware).
“The corporate problem becomes a consumer problem,” states Fouks.
And in reference to the historic fortifications around France, he says: “There is no more Maginot Line in this world; it never works.”
He’s also not convinced the Trump-era retreat on ESG is especially significant, incidentally. Despite the “strong wind” against the concept from the White House, it remains a “real priority” for clients, “because it’s a business reality, it’s not a political concept”.
“If you are just a silo, you are just a part of the answer.”
Music to politics
Fouks’ colourful early career hints at his willingness to blend the creative with the strategic and political.
The chairman became a music producer in the late 1970s to pay for his studies, eventually focusing on world music (“in marketing, the rules are do what the others are not doing, or try to find a good niche”). A concurrent political career saw Fouks become deputy chief of staff, later chief of staff, to then-Minister of Agriculture Michel Rocard.
Leaving music behind, Fouks launched his own comms agency two years later. A major career moment came after he worked for François Mitterrand’s successful 1988 presidential campaign.
Fouks later joined Michel Rocard in the Prime Minister’s office, but left dramatically a few months later after he loudly disagreed with an ad campaign from Jacques Segura – the legendary Havas creative who, at 93 year old, is now a colleague.
Fouks was dismissed from the PM’s office after calling Segura’s work for the 1987 New Caledonia independence referendum “a piece of shit” (he admits to being a “drama queen” over the incident).
“The campaign was in September, and two months later, Jacques Seguela called me, asked me to take a coffee and breakfast. I remember it was in La Plaza Athénée, and he told me, ‘Stephane, you were right. This campaign was a piece of shit. So if you don’t want to do shit anymore, join us.’
“And I said to Jacques, OK, ‘But I want to be independent. I want to be sure that I can have control of the campaign I will do.’”
He created RSCG Public, now known as Havas Paris, in 1988. Fouks went on to be appointed executive co-chairman of the expanded Euro RSCG Worldwide in 2005, then became Havas vice-president in 2011.
“I say [Segura] is my father, because the guy did enough math to say, OK, finally, this crazy guy who knocks on the door and is dismissed from the Prime Minister’s office, maybe it’s interesting to have him with me. And 37 years after, I’m still there.”
The experience appears to have solidified the importance of breaking down barriers between disciplines for Fouks.
“I always think that, at the end, to organise a world in silo by expertise is a nonsense, because we have to be global experts for clients.
“We are a solution-provider for clients, which means that when you speak about what is a good strategy with a client, it’s not about doing PR, creating content for social media, organising an event, or making an advertising campaign. It’s what is the most appropriate way to tackle your target, to be where you want to be, and sometimes it’s a mix. So for the client, if you are just a silo, you are just a part of the answer.”
“Expertise is not the enemy of global answers; what’s needed is the glue to stick them together.”
Plans
Back to the present, and H/Advisors plans further expansion in early 2026, including a permanent presence in Poland via the acquisition of an unnamed agency in the country.
“They asked us to join, after collaborating with us on a lot of clients, especially with the French and the Germans,” says Fouks, adding that H/Advisors’ work with Ukraine probably also helped in this regard.
He says of the acquisition strategy: “We don’t want to be everywhere, we want to be in all the strategic places with a leading agency in the top five of the market.”
The chairman says that increasingly, agencies will approach H/Advisors about being acquired, rather than vice versa. Gauly is one such example: “They are a young, energetic, successful, very high-quality, beautiful team… but we lose opportunity when we are not part of a network. Because in the world of today, clients need not just a German solution, they need a worldwide expertise and solution.”
Fouks says the network is “finishing… our build-up in Europe”, and will open an office in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, this month (January). The country has become an increasingly popular destination for Western comms agencies, but one not without controversy, given the Kingdom’s record of human rights abuses.
H/Advisors has worked with clients in Saudi Arabia for more than a decade; recent examples include strategy services for the AlUla tourism campaign and the Riyadh Expo 2030 bid. Fouks defends the activities there. “We made a bet 10 years ago… that the project of transformation was credible,” he states, adding that communication is a “stronger help for transformation”.
For Fouks, “we have to accept sometimes that controversy is part of the business, because our business is not just to work with perfect people, but to support transformation”.
“Do we think that it was right to make this bet? I say, oh yes. And if 10 years ago I was one of the rare agencies in Saudi, let’s assume that today, everybody is fighting for the business in Saudi.”
Fouks also reveals H/Advisors is “looking for acquisition” in the Kingdom, with “maybe more to come” in 2026.
But the US is the next strategic priority for investment. Organic expansion is planned, but the country is “also a place for acquisition”, Fouks says, pointing to the new generation of independent, fast-growing agencies seeking a global network. H/Advisors’ US business is “very strong in financial comms”, he says, but less so in other disciplines. Incidentally, the US arm carried out the world’s largest IPO in 2025: the $30bn flotation of Medline, the medical supply group.
Bennett adds: “We’ll look for opportunities, the strategic imperative, if there were a significant opportunity to expand, particularly in corporate in the US. And we’re not limited by size.”
Fouks says it’s a “good time to make our mark in the US”. Is the mega-merger of US holdco giants Omnicom and IPG an opportunity to buy assets, should they become available? “We’ll see, I will say,” the chairman cautions.
He expects to see “rationalisation and a concentration” as a “minimum” following the deal. It “makes no sense” from a “strategic point of view” to organise in a fragmented way, Fouks says.
While there is logic to having specialist agencies, what’s needed is “the glue” to stick them together. “Expertise is not the enemy of global answers,” as he puts it.
Fouks is looking beyond the US, too, targeting organic growth opportunities where H/Advisors has worked but does not own offices. Canada, Brazil and India are named as ambitions.
How can H/Advisors fund its global expansion?
“I think we have the best parentage of anyone,” says Bennett. “We are owned by Havas [which] has no debt. I would hate to be running an agency in this environment, owned by a PE firm with leverage in my business. So we have no debt, we have a very supportive controlling shareholder that we can acquire.”
We meet soon after the eyebrow-raising report in the FT that Havas was in the market for WPP. Havas CEO Yannick Bolloré later squashed the rumour, but for Fouks, the fact that a deal for a holdco giant five times Havas’ size could seem credible shows the status of the French company in the market.
For H/Advisors, the impression is of an agency with big ambitions to grow – and quickly.
Fouks concludes: “I will say we have an original profile in this industry: youngest, European core, more connected to content creation, more digital, also, using an AI perspective, including in financial comms.
“So we consider that, after having delivered that, it was a good moment to say, look who we are, really: a serious player in the competition, a leading network in Europe, original profile in terms of where to attack the market, original profile in terms of culture and with money to continue to develop by organic and by acquisition. It could be worse!”