Thirty years in and around the press.
Alistair Crighton has spent thirty years in and around the press – as an investigative journalist, editor, publisher, and latterly as an adviser to organisations under media scrutiny. He founded his first newspaper, an English-language weekly in St Petersburg, at age of 18, and went on to national press editing and publishing roles in the UK before moving to the Gulf, where his agency career included Middle East Chair of the global public affairs practice at Hill+Knowlton.
The move into investigative work followed naturally: the same instincts that find a story can test one. Today the practice combines investigative due diligence with senior communications counsel – supported by editorial relationships across London, the Gulf and East Africa, and by working reach across English, Arabic and Amharic from bases in Dubai and Addis Ababa.
Selected work
- Enhanced due diligence, media audit and reputation strategy for a regional energy group ahead of international market entry.
- Source-validated enhanced due diligence on a regional industrial group for an institutional client.
- Regulatory and reputational risk analysis for a major international humanitarian organisation ahead of a regional headquarters decision in the UAE.
- A major investigation into aid flows and their diversion in the Great Lakes region and potential ties to extractive industry legislation.
- Screening due diligence on extractive industry companies, central Africa and UAE.
- Data-governance and localisation analysis for a global hyperscale cloud provider across KSA and UAE regimes.
- Directed UNHCR’s GCC Zakat communications strategy – religious legitimacy, sovereign relationships and donor confidence – delivering a 600%+ increase in contributions.
- Communications strategy and implementation for the UAE Federal Tax Authority’s introduction of VAT – the first consumption tax in the country’s history.
- Direct counsel to the CEO of Masdar through a shareholder restructure exceeding USD 1bn, and positioning of clean-energy initiatives in Africa.
- Strategic communications counsel to the Islamic Military Counter Terrorism Coalition, the 43-nation alliance headquartered in Riyadh.
- Led communications for Abu Dhabi Airports ahead of the opening of Zayed International Airport.
- Reputational and crisis communications planning for a leisure and tourism brand following a fatal charter aircraft crash.
- Reputation recovery programme for a pharmaceutical business.
