Stakeholder communications group King Worldwide has announced the launch of Keyhaven, a new company dealing exclusively with crisis management and global reputation.

Keyhaven will help King Worldwide's clients to prepare for crises. "Recent months have demonstrated that we live in an ever more uncertain world," comments John Deverell CBE, Keyhavens's new chief executive, "and a company's failure to take account of the range of risks it faces will lead to increasingly bigger penalties. Its employees, assets, reputation and revenue will be seriously exposed by risks, as well as its license to operate possibly compromised."

Deverell has previously worked in security in both the public and private sectors, for Invensys and the MOD. His military career took in a post as the senior British officer in the Iraq Survey Group, and he helped disprove the pre-war intelligence on weapons of mass destruction. He has also advised Libyan officials on giving up weapons of mass destruction.

Fred Stone, head of business development (international) at King Worldwide, says: “In any crisis one of the most important things for a company to do is to communicate - with the whole multitude of different audiences that will be involved.  And often they are not really prepared to be able to do that, either organisationally or mentally.  They will tend to turn to their existing PR agency and whilst virtually all PR companies claim to handle crises, this is really an add-on to what they specialise in and not a dedicated skill.

“We saw this as an opportunity to set up a specialist company, with a professional crisis expert as CEO, and to pair this specialism with the extensive outreach capabilities of King Worldwide. John has experience in dealing with extremely difficult and life-threatening situations, and we are confident that by combining this with all our communications expertise we can really address our clients’ needs.”

King Worldwide board member and Keyhaven co-founder, Hugh Morrison, adds: "With a global client base of more than 1,000 leading companies, we know that linking effective crisis planning with reputation management answers an increasingly important part of the boardroom agenda. We designed Keyhaven to deliver the intelligence, services and solutions that address this growing demand and are delighted to have been able to attract a leader of John's calibre to head the team."

Keyhaven will draw on the communications and logistical resources of King Worldwide. This includes its security and disaster recovery team, which supports NYC311, New York City’s 24/7 public information line. It will also take advantage of expert teams within M:Communications, the King subsidiary which has managed corporate crises across the board.