Peter Mandelson reportedly made more than £1.5 million from selling his shares in Global Counsel, the advisory firm he co-founded, including £250,000 in the days before it collapsed over his links to Jeffrey Epstein. The disgraced peer transferred the majority of his shares, worth up to £1.4 million, to family and friends in 2024 before becoming ambassador to the United States, according to the Financial Times.
As clients including Barclays, Vodafone, Tesco and Klarna severed ties with the company earlier this year over the scale of his friendship with the convicted sex offender, the firm bought out his final shares to sever all links. Global Counsel publicly announced it had cut ties with Mandelson, while his former aide Benjamin Wegg-Prosser stepped down as CEO in an attempt to stay solvent. However, days later the firm went into administration with the loss of almost 100 jobs.
Mandelson, who famously said he was 'intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich' when he was a Labour minister, was last week revealed to have demanded a £580,000 pay-off after being sacked as ambassador over his Epstein friendship. The revelations come as Sir Keir Starmer faces further questions over his decision to appoint Mandelson as a senior diplomat last year.
Global Counsel, co-founded by Mandelson and Wegg-Prosser in 2010, had offices in London, Berlin, Doha and Washington DC. It worked with clients including Palantir, GSK, Vodafone, OpenAI, TikTok and the English Premier League. Administrators at Interpath said the firm suffered a significant financial impact from a wave of customers cutting ties, leaving directors with no choice but to call in administrators.
Downing Street last week released the first batch of documents surrounding Mandelson's appointment as ambassador to the US in December 2024. They confirmed Sir Keir was warned about Mandelson's 'particularly close' relationship with Epstein, but his response was not recorded. The documents also did not detail why he pushed through the appointment despite being told it was a 'reputational risk'. Senior Tory MP Alex Burghart said there were 'many, many documents missing' and accused the government of either failing to follow due process or not disclosing all relevant documents.
