Tunheim Partners Acquires New School Communications

Tunheim Partners, Inc. announced last week that it will acquire St. Paul-based New School Communications, and will integrate both the public affairs and public relations practices of each firm over the next few months.

Blois Olson, president/chief executive of New School will serve as executive vice president at Tunheim Partners, and will become a shareholder at the firm. Olson will provide particular leadership in the public affairs and crisis communications, and lead new service and product initiatives.

At the same time, Tim Loesch, senior vice president of Tunheim Partners, was promoted to executive vice president of public relations, providing leadership in the retail and corporate communications practices.

"Each of our agencies has strong relationships with some great clients," said Kathy Tunheim, chief executive of Tunheim Partners. "This is an opportunity to put our combined energies into innovation and new service offerings to meet future needs of those clients. We've had the opportunity to collaborate and compete with New School in the past, and really appreciate the energy and vision they bring to our firm."

"Our regional public affairs strength and growing consumer practice will complement the already industry-leading corporate practices of Tunheim Partners," Olson said. "Together, we will provide clients with the most experienced corporate communications agency, and new, exciting public affairs and consumer offerings to the market. The combined entity will be the most innovative and visionary full-service public relations agency in the market, and will introduce multiple new service offerings to existing and future clients."

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.