| Kreab | |
|---|---|
| Type | Private |
| Industry | Public relations |
| Founded | 1970 |
| Founders | Peje Emilsson, Jan-Erik Ander, Peder Olin |
| Headquarters | , Sweden |
| Key people | Peje Emilsson (founder) |
| Services | Corporate and financial communications, public affairs |
Number of employees | about 400 (2018) |
| Website | kreab |
Kreab is a Swedish communications consultancy that works in corporate and financial communications and public affairs. It was founded in Stockholm in 1970 as Kreativ Information AB and is still based there. After a merger with Gavin Anderson & Company, a subsidiary of the Omnicom Group, it traded as Kreab Gavin Anderson from 2009 to 2015. In 2018 it had offices in 25 countries. The group includes a Finnish company in Helsinki and an office in Brussels that works on European Union policy for corporate clients. Former politicians from Sweden and Finland have worked for the firm. In the 1970s and 1980s Kreab wrote and published material for Swedish business on nuclear power and the environment. Its contacts with the Sweden Democrats in 2015 led to the departure of the head of its Swedish operation.
Kreab was founded in Stockholm in 1970 as Kreativ Information AB by Peje Emilsson, Jan-Erik Ander and Peder Olin. It is one of the oldest public relations firms in Sweden. In the year the firm was founded, Emilsson ran the Moderate Party's election campaign.
In 1972 Emilsson recruited the physicist Tor Ragnar Gerholm, and Kreab and the Swedish Employers' Confederation (SAF) used him to write material about the future for schoolchildren. Kreab published Gerholm's book Varför kärnkraft? (Why nuclear power?) in 1975. Before the 1980 Swedish nuclear power referendum, SAF reissued it and other Kreab texts through the organisation Näringslivets energiinformation. In 1984 Kreab and SAF produced the pamphlet What about the Future?, written by Gerholm and the American futurist Herman Kahn. In their study of climate obstruction in Sweden, Vowles, Ekberg and Hultman place Kreab and Gerholm, with SAF and the Federation of Swedish Industries, among the first business-linked voices that tried to counter the environmental and anti-nuclear movement.
Kreab opened an office in Brussels in 1992. In 2008 it organised the first public event of the Stockholm Initiative, later known as the Climate Realists, a network that disputes the scientific consensus on human-caused climate change.
By 2008 Kreab had 150 full-time staff and a turnover of about 300 million Swedish kronor.
In February 2009 Kreab merged with Gavin Anderson & Company, a British financial communications firm owned by the Omnicom Group. The new company, Kreab Gavin Anderson Worldwide AB, was based in Stockholm and had 350 staff and 500 clients in 25 countries, with a turnover of about 500 million kronor. Emilsson kept more than half of the shares. Through the merger Kreab gained Gavin Anderson's offices in London, Tokyo and Singapore. In June 2009 the firm agreed to buy the Norwegian consultancy 20/20 Communications.
In 2012 and 2013 the chief executive, the finance director and several regional heads left the firm. The Holmes Report linked several of the departures to failed management buyout attempts. Charlotte Erkhammar became chief executive in 2013. Magnora, Emilsson's holding company, then owned 53 per cent of the group and Omnicom the rest.
In January 2015 the company announced that it would change its name back to Kreab. An internal audit at the Australian subsidiary, carried out when its finance manager was replaced, found that its financial reporting did not match the real state of the business. The subsidiary went into reconstruction in December 2016 and was liquidated in January 2017, and Kreab AB wrote off about 12.5 million kronor in receivables and a loan. Fee income under the Kreab brand fell from €44.6 million in 2015 to €40.4 million in 2016. Sweden, which had provided 55 per cent of the business ten years earlier, now accounted for about 15 per cent, and Brussels had become the largest office. In December 2016 Magnora wrote down the value of its Kreab holding by 87 million kronor. It owned just over half of the group, and the other 47 per cent was held by DAS/GA Partners, Omnicom International Holdings and GAWC Inc. In 2018 Kreab had offices in 25 countries and about 400 employees.
Kreab Oy, the group's Finnish company, is based in Helsinki. Its managing director since 2015 has been Mikael Jungner. In 2025 it had revenue of €2.2 million and 17 employees.
In March 2018 Kauppalehti asked whether Jungner's frequent tweets against plastics were a conflict of interest, because Kreab was then working for Kotkamills, a forest industry company in Kotka that had launched a plastic-free consumer board in late February. Jungner said that in his view a conflict of interest for someone tweeting was a different matter.
Carl Bildt was chairman of Kreab before he became Sweden's foreign minister in 2006. Sven Otto Littorin, later minister for employment, worked at the firm in the 1990s. In June 2011 it became known that the Swedish Ministry of Finance had paid Kreab more than 800,000 kronor to make its material on the fiscal policy framework easier for the general public to follow. Sven-Erik Österberg, the Social Democratic chairman of the Riksdag's Committee on the Constitution, asked why a ministry with 400 employees needed a PR firm to explain its own policy and said such spending might have to be reviewed. A spokesman for Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt said the hiring had been handled by civil servants and was not a government decision.
It emerged in September 2015 that Kreab had lobbied the Sweden Democrats intensively on behalf of business. The Swedish Postcode Lottery then froze its cooperation with the firm. In December 2015 Markus Uvell, the head of Kreab's Swedish operation, had to leave after renewed contacts with the party.
In Finland, Ulf Sundqvist, a former minister of education and chairman of the Social Democratic Party of Finland, became an adviser to Kreab in 2010. Kreab's Brussels office works on EU policy and legislation for corporate clients and earned more than €6 million in 2023. In September 2024, after Slovenia nominated Marta Kos for the European Commission, she was listed as a senior adviser there. Kos said she had advised Kreab staff and clients on women's healthcare policy and international trade under a contract and had never worked as a lobbyist.