A coup for Vigo Consulting, which has just hired Damian Reece as senior counsel, to add to a growing team of skilled people.

Other recent hires include Guy Scarborough and Joe Quinlan, experienced operators who will specialise in capital markets and cross-border M&A.

Reece was the first head of business at The Telegraph Group back in 2005 and was latterly at Instinctif Partners.

His clients have included AJ Bell, Spire Healthcare, Boden and many others.

I succeeded Damian as the Sunday Telegraph deputy personal finance editor in 1997.

The funnier parts of the PR trade had me as Damian II, the sequel to The Omen, the movie about the child of the devil.

This was harsh.

Anyway, Vigo clearly plans to make waves here.

Patrick d’Ancona, the CEO, reckons Vigo is now the “UK’s leading independent strategic communications consultancy”, with the emphasis on the word independent.

Rivals might challenge the “leading” bit, but we’ll return to that another day.

Reece notes: “Clients often feel restricted in their choice of adviser for all sorts of reasons and end up compromising in the one area they can’t afford to – reputation.

“We’re creating something new at Vigo, so clients don’t have to compromise – experience, expertise and execution from brilliant practitioners who focus on one thing and one thing only: clients.”

The clear suggestion here is that some of the, clears throat, no-longer independent consultancies aren’t giving clients the best service. And that the clients have noticed.

All those mega deals of the last couple of years leave some asking if we have reached Peak PR.

Vigo is relatively small, though it has led communications on some very big deals.

It’s not a scrappy upstart, it just thinks there is room to steal clients from really big players that may not be giving enough love to businesses that have been paying fees for years and might deserve better.

And there have to be questions about whether the private equity investors into the now giant communications firms quite get what they bought.

Earnings will probably be lumpier, less predictable, than they imagined.

Fall outs seem likely.

This is not a point Vigo is making, but I reckon a lot of advisory talents don’t want to work for large, institutionalised consultancies (office politics, poor management, remuneration arguments etc…) so leave.

This does at least set up new competition, but many Boards, because of their obsession with size, won’t engage with independent talent, reinforcing the power of the large players whether it is in their interests or not.

One other thought: What all these mega-deals mean is that the gene pool of value-adding advisers to UK business risks getting more and more concentrated because Boards think size matters when it comes to best practice.

They may have it upside down. Scale might be the enemy of good advice.

Vigo intends to try and prove that point.

Please send candidates for press release of the day to: Simon.english@roxhillmedia.com