Himanshu Verma joins Fifth Ring as managing director for APAC region

Fifth Ring also acquires PR startup.

In a release, Fifth Ring announced that Himanshu Verma will serve as the company’s APAC managing director. Verma brings with him more than 21 years of public relations, public affairs and marketing communications experience.

Prior to founding Like Minds Consulting, he was the Head of Marketing and PR of ESPN STAR Sports. He has worked in leadership roles with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and PR agencies Text 100 and IPAN Hill+Knowlton Strategies.

The release also notes, Singapore digital and PR start-up Like Minds Consulting has been acquired by Fifth Ring as part of a strategic expansion in the Asia Pacific region.

Here’s more:

The company’s new office in Singapore highlights the increasing development opportunities across its key market sectors of energy, construction, property, education and financial services. It will be taking its integrated communications offering–which strategically combines business positioning, public relations, advertising, creative, digital media & marketing – to the Singapore market.

Group managing director, Clif Collier, said: “I am delighted to welcome Himanshu and his team to Fifth Ring. We look forward to bringing our highly specialised B2B marketing expertise to brands in the energy, education, large infrastructure projects and related industries across APAC.

“Fifth Ring has a strong history of ably supporting its clients across the European, North American and Middle East markets. With our offices in Singapore and going forward in other countries we will be able to support our clients’ strategic expansion and consolidation in APAC markets.”

Ian Ord, Fifth Ring’s business development director, said: “While we have managed a number of successful projects in Singapore, we recognise that having a local presence is a prerequisite in order to succeed and grow. This acquisition will help support our philosophy of a global strategy being supported by local delivery, language and cultural understanding.

“We are confident that this expansion will lead to attractive opportunities for Fifth Ring, not only in procuring new business, but also in presenting new opportunities for our existing client base.

“The move demonstrates our active approach to fully internationalise Fifth Ring – a vision we set out in 2004 - by securing offices across the energy centres of the world. We constantly seek to raise the bar to an entirely new level.”