Merck APCO handled the crisis for
Merck & Co's withdrawal of
Vioxx from the market.
Kazakhstan's president,
Nursultan Nazarbayev hired APCO to extricate himself from a four-year-long dispute with his former son-in-law Rakhat Aliyev.
Worldcom WorldCom hired APCO Worldwide to handle its political PR surrounding the media frenzy regarding its disclosure that £2.4bn in expenses had been falsely reported in its financial results in 2002.
Gujarat APCO also promoted and rebranded the
Gujarat Global Investors' Summit in India, the showpiece investment meeting of the then chief minister and current prime minister,
Narendra Modi as "Vibrant Gujarat".
State Department APCO Worldwide was the
lead management agency for the American Pavilion at the Astana Expo 2017.
Advancement of Sound Science Coalition The
"Sound Science Coalition" (TASSC) was created in 1993 by Phillip Morris and APCO in response to a 1992
United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report which identified secondhand smoke as a Group A human carcinogen. TASSC developed local coalitions to influence media, legislators, and the public, and recruited scientists and researchers to support Philip Morris's position. Nonetheless, TASSC described itself as "a not-for-profit coalition advocating the use of sound science in public policy decision making." TASSC's links to the tobacco industry were minimized as part of APCO's strategy for TASSC to appear to be an independent national grassroots coalition. To conceal this relationship, TASSC broadened their focus to question other scientific topics, notable among them
global warming.
Malaysia On March 30, 2010, Malaysian opposition leader
Anwar Ibrahim alleged in the Malaysian parliament (the
Dewan Rakyat) that the
1Malaysia concept was mirrored after "
One Israel" concept and designed by Mindteams Sdn Bhd, a branch in
Malaysia of APCO Worldwide. He alleged that APCO also created the One Israel concept in 1999 for then Israeli's Prime Minister
Ehud Barak. Both APCO and the
Barisan Nasional government stated that Anwar's allegation was untrue. Malaysian lawmakers have tabled a motion to censure Anwar for misleading the Parliament over his 1Malaysia-One Israel allegations which were passed by the Parliament on April 22, 2010.
Hewlett-Packard In 2010, APCO was involved in the recommendation to fire
Mark Hurd, the CEO of
Hewlett-Packard (HP). Kent Jarrell, a senior vice president, wrote a mock news story which he showed to HP's board. During this same meeting, he contemplated that HP would negatively be affected by bad press of its CEO being involved in an inappropriate relationship with an ex-soft porn actress,
Jodie Fisher.
Elbit Systems In September 2024, the London headquarters of APCO was targeted by
Palestine Action over its representation of the UK interests of Israeli arms firm
Elbit Systems. Activists from the group daubed the façade of the office building with red paint using repurposed fire extinguishers, blocked the entrance and locked the doors with a bike lock.
Labour Party In February 2026 it was reported that PR firm APCO had investigated the private affairs of several journalists when commissioned by the
Blairite lobbying group
Labour Together to ascertain the source of reports about Labour Together's late declaration of certain donations.
The Sunday Times reported that the APCO report, named "Operation Cannon", was written by a former
Sunday Times employee and was shown to Labour shadow cabinet members, falsely suggesting that two
Sunday Times journalists were part of a Russian campaign to politically harm Starmer. Labour Together sent a shorter version of the APCO report to
GCHQ's
National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), which declined to investigate. Labour Together's director
Josh Simons claimed that by including this information in its report APCO had gone beyond what had been asked of them and welcomed the launch of an investigation into APCO's conduct by the
Public Relations and Communications Association.
The Guardian newspaper on 20 February 2026 reported that it had seen the emails to NCSC and disclosed some of their contents, and that there were calls for Simons to resign or be sacked. In March 2026, Simons said he had been "naïve" in his commissioning of the report because he "was 30 years old". It was later reported that Tom Harper, a senior APCO executive, told a freelance contractor who had been hired on the project to destroy evidence of its actions. ==References==