Hakluyt doesn’t want to be the 007 of advisory groups any more
Secrecy is practically built into Hakluyt’s DNA.
The London-based private intelligence group, founded by a band of MI6 officers, has spent the past 25 years cultivating an enigmatic air of “what exactly is it that they do?”, which seemed to be the point.
Stroll by its discreet Mayfair townhouse, and nothing appears too out of the ordinary. Except perhaps the Gurkha security guards that have been reported to linger outside.
Hakluyt is typical of a “this-tape-will-self-destruct-in-five-seconds” approach that clients “lap up”, an investigator at a rival company once told the FT’s Tom Burgis.
At 34, Chandra entered the top job as one of the few minorities at the group. “I’m brown, I didn’t go to one of those schools . . . so even me being in this role is indicative that this place doesn’t care [about candidates’ background],” he told the FT.
The group, which is 85 per cent male, doesn’t currently have any specific targets for ethnic diversity but says it aims to interview as many women as men for open roles. (Although DD has heard these efforts haven’t extended very far past the C-suite.)
Hakluyt’s ranks include ex-lawyers, ex-bankers, and even some ex-FT journalists. Former UK Treasury official Dan Rosenfield was a Hakluyt consultant before becoming Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s chief of staff last year. And, naturally, there are still a few former intelligence officials in the mix. But only seven.
Lord Paul Deighton, the former Goldman Sachs banker who headed the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games in 2012 and now chairs Hakluyt © LEE_MAWDSLEY
Under Chandra, Hakluyt has updated its single-page website to something slightly more robust, and, he says he can’t think of any clients the company should’ve been “embarrassed” to work with in the seven years that he has been there.
And things like snooping on an NGO are no longer characteristic of the new Hakluyt, for example. (In 2001 The Sunday Times reported it had used a German-born agent to spy on Greenpeace.)
And the cyber security assignments that have recently landed other private intelligence groups in hot water simply aren’t a “Hakluyt-shaped problem”, says Chandra. But what is?
Hakluyt’s international advisory board provides some clues into its enigmatic client list — counting veterans of Unilever, Coca-Cola, Rolls-Royce, Tata and UK Intelligence hub GCHQ.
And now that the advisory has opened its Silicon Valley office, there’s no doubt it is looking to shake hands in Big Tech.