The News Corp lobbyist has gallic charm, contacts to die for and a reputation as one of the Murdoch empire's most trusted envoys
James Murdoch has described News Corp's public affairs executive Frédéric Michel as the firm's "PO box" for correspondence between government ministers and the Murdoch empire.
"On various levels, he was the liaison with policymakers," Murdoch told the Leveson Inquiry, describing Michel as a "diligent" employee. News Corp insiders saw him as a "James Murdoch acolyte".
The emails read out to the inquiry suggest Michel enjoyed a close relationship with Jeremy Hunt, apparently managing to get a direct line to the Tory culture secretary within minutes of a story breaking about News Corp's attempts to take full control of the pay TV company BSkyB.
As director of public affairs for Europe between 2009 and this February, it was Michel's job to manage relations with outsiders, particularly those in parliament. For a year, the anglicised Frenchman – who calls himself Fred, having long dropped the acute accents on his birth certificate – had been in charge of chatting up government ministers and their special advisers. His ultimate goal was to ensure that News Corp navigated any roadblocks hampering its mission to buy out the proportion of BSkyB it didn't already own.
Given that the BSkyB deal subsequently fell through after the Guardian's revelation that the News of the World had hacked into Milly Dowler's voicemail, it may seem a surprise that Michel was recently promoted within News Corp. But he was very well regarded in the organisation, highly valued for his ability to network in the highest echelons of British political society.
On 13 February this year, News Corp announced he was being promoted to become "senior vice-president of government affairs and public policy for Europe" – a fancy title that meant he had been picked to lead News Corp's European regulatory and public policy efforts, based in Brussels.
The press release trumpeting Michel's promotion was notable for what it left out: all investors were told about Michel's pre-News Corp past was that he was "founding director of the international thinktank Policy Network". While perfectly true, it omitted to mention that Michel had left the centre-left thinktank in 2003, going on to spend six years working for a reputation management agency called ReputationInc.
The firm was a pioneer in the reputation-management industry, helping embattled executives to sanitise their public image. Michel was one of their top dogs. According to a biography on the company website in 2008, he headed ReputationInc's public affairs and stakeholder function, "providing strategic counsel and advice on policy development, stakeholder strategy and infrastructure to major corporations, international governments and public bodies."
The company wooed clients across the spectrum, from blue-chip retailers to quangos such as the Competition Commission, the Audit Commission and the Financial Services Authority. It also worked for charities. In 2008, Michel, apparently representing ReputationInc, was on the trustee management board of Wellbeing of Women (patron: Sarah Brown), which funds research into obstetrics and gynaecological health.
One Labour source who knew Michel in the early days of the new millennium said Michel behaved like the "Frenchman about town", possessed of "classic gallic charm", complete with Cantona-esque accent. In those days, said the source, Michel "liked to present himself as the interlocutor between the British and French left".
In 2002, Michel wrote a piece for the Observer saying that the French left should follow Tony Blair's example and "modernise or die".
But Labour insiders did not consider Michel to be one of their own. "He always seemed non-ideological – much more concerned with wanting to get in with the people in power," said the source. Another Labour insider played down Michel's role in "founding" Policy Network, saying he had "quite a junior role in Policy Network in the early 2000s, and was part of the Mandelson set".
Other contacts in Michel's address book came from the top universities he attended. He is a graduate of the Institute of Political Studies (Sciences-Po), in France, and also holds an MA in European Studies from Sussex University, and an MPhil from the London School of Economics (where he was a Chevening Scholar). He was a PhD fellow of the European University Institute in Florence with the French Foreign Office and the European commission, where he developed research on pension and corporate governance reforms.
Prior to working at Policy Network, he was senior research fellow at another British centre-left thinktank the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) working on European regulation. He also spent a year as an analyst with City shareholder adviser PIRC and at Fleming Investment Bank as a European analyst.
When Michel joined News Corp, colleagues would joke how well connected he was, relying on relationships he had spent a whole life building up.
The emails he exchanged with special advisers to Jeremy Hunt and Vince Cable – the two coalition ministers with responsibility for the BSkyB bid – reveal a friendly man with the persistence of a charity mugger who will not take no for an answer. The details in the emails are said to have surprised News Corp insiders: they knew he was good, but not that good. Michel appeared to have everybody's mobile number, and they usually picked up when they saw him calling. It was for this reason that James Murdoch trusted him implicitly. That's why no one in the know was surprised when Michel was promoted in February.