Eugene Donati

Eugene Donati, Logos Consulting Group

Eugene Donati became of counsel to Logos Consulting Group in 2005.

Gene has twenty-five years of experience providing public relations and communication counsel for business leaders confronted with complex ethical, financial or political choices. His practice builds on his three core competencies: financial communications, crisis management and public affairs

From 1994 through 2004, Gene was a managing director at Clark & Weinstock. There, among other duties, he has served as chief communication strategist simultaneously for two global investment banks, planned and implement the definitive public relations strategy for the successful launch of a new capital management firm, and ran the investor relations and media programs for micro cap company that led to a successful exchange listing.

Gene assisted a major insurance company communicate successfully through a complicated series of overseas investments and divestments and a major merger-of-equals, while the company was under intense regulatory scrutiny at home. He also organized entire 'day-of' communications for 100 merger agreements. He has had a significant international practice, with clients in Japan, Germany, the UK, the Netherlands, Hong Kong, and China. He also worked with the scientific community and policymakers on how to make science more understandable and relevant to the general public. Gene experience reaches broadly across sectors, including banking, insurance, investment, healthcare, chemical, broadcasting, publishing, manufacturing, electronics, high technology, cable, telecom, energy, food, retail, extractive and capital equipment companies.

Gene long has been recognized for his innovation and creative approaches to solving protracted communications issues. For instance, he redesigned the investor relations function at a well-known New York-based firm, including new job definitions, website content and revamped investor communications, to meet the new needs for internet modulated information. Gene established initial strategies and plans for a resource-strapped United Nations agency with a five-year mandate to develop discrete global standards on sustainable forestry. Earlier in his career, Gene established the first computer-based direct mail system on Capitol Hill for an individual Member of Congress and was among the first to integrate computer technology into day-to-day political campaign management. Gene directed all public relations for one of the first rescues of a failed savings & loan. The template Gene established was copied widely by the FDIC and others as savings & loan failures spread nationwide.

Gene was Vice President for Corporate Communications at the buy-side firm Equitable Capital, a consultant at the public relations firm Hill & Knowlton, spokesman for Mellon Bank in Pittsburgh, press secretary to two Members of Congress and manager of several political campaigns in the northeast and mountain west United States.

The more recent of Gene’s two graduate degrees is from the University of Toronto where he completed research on the communication of environmental liabilities. At Toronto, he was elected a fellow of Massey College, the graduate honors college. Gene's first graduate degree is from The American University in Washington in public administration and political campaign management. Gene earned a B.A. with honors in international relations from the University of Pittsburgh.

Gene is an adjunct professor at New York University, where he created graduate curricula from scratch -- in Investor Relations, Public Affairs and Issues Management -- and teaches as part of NYU’s Master of Science in Public Relations and Corporate Communications program. His teaching affiliation with NYU began in 2001 with its Public Relations Summer Institute. He is also an active member of the National Investor Relations Institute and a frequent contributor to professional journals on financial communications issues.

Recent Publications

“Guidance on Guidance”. Investor Relations Update, a publication of the National Investor Relations Institute (June 2006). Ending earnings guidance would cede control of a company’s dialogue with investors into the hands of disparate third parties, without the envisioned benefits. A debate with Candace Browning, Merrill Lynch’s director of equity research.
“The McKinsey Study is Flawed and Reaches the Wrong Conclusion.” CFO.com (April 6, 2006). The McKinsey study that debunks earnings guidance ignores the role that analysts’ estimates play in financial communications.
“Question Is Not the Number, But Who Wields Its Power.” Financial Times (March 22, 2006). Letters. Companies should participate actively in the public dialogue on quarterly earnings and not let it to the sell-side alone to call the shots.
“The Night People of IR.” Investor Relations Update (August 2005). New tools now enable IR practitioners to spy on corporate friends and foes alike, even your board of directors. But does Reg FD impose an affirmative duty to protect a company by every legal means, even surveillance?
“I Have A Feeling…” Investor Relations Update (August 2003). The role of intuition in investors’ decision-making.
“Trust but Verify.” Investor Relations Update (June 2002). Trust is perhaps more central to restoring investors’ confidence than are transparency and disclosure.
“Pondering the Internet.” Investor Relations Update (April 2002). Six lessons from Marshall McLuhan that can make financial communications more credible.
“The Softer Side of Corporate Reporting.” Investor Relations (Sept. 2001). New intangible asset classes and new non-financial metrics soon will change the face of financial communications.
“Opposed Triangles: Policy and Regulation In Canada and the US.” Policy Options, Canada’s premier public policy magazine, from the non-partisan Institute for Research on Public Policy, Montreal. (April 2001). The two nations’ diametrical approaches to democratic participation in public policy.
“Perspective: Foresters and the 4 Cs of Journalism” Journal of Forestry. (April 2001). How journalists turn scientific data into news.
“Street Smoke” The Daily Deal (April 18, 2001). A new “best-practices” standard for investor communications.

Phone: 212-689-4095
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