Powerful publicity firm Fingerprint Communications imploded Wednesday night, with 20 employees quitting and its founding partners, Jessica Meisels and Greg Link, now planning to break up the company.
Fingerprint has repped high-profile clients, including Alice + Olivia, Diesel, the Sagamore Hotel in Miami and Muscle Milk, and is promoting Condé Nast Traveler’s Hot List Party in Las Vegas tonight.
Last fall, Link hired Carol Bell, a founder of Miami-based p.r. firm Patton Group. Soon after Bell joined, said Meisels, “it was very clear what the agenda was.” Insiders claimed Link and Bell wanted to dissolve the company so the two could form their own business — which both Bell and Link deny.
“[Meisels and I] are in the process of amicably trying to dissolve Fingerprint,” Link told Page Six. “I wish Jessica nothing but the best.”
Link approached Meisels this week about parting ways. In response, according to insiders, an emotional Meisels cornered employees in the office and demanded to know whether they would continue to work for her or for Link. By Wednesday, a dozen employees in LA and five in New York had resigned, including Bell.
Adding to the intrigue, a senior employee tried to wheel one of Fingerprint’s computer servers out of its Flatiron District building. The server was returned after the staffer was intercepted by building security and police.
Later, insiders said, Meisels’ father, Steve, came to the office. “He was snooping around, asking who people were and what they did,” said a witness. Staffers told a building manager, and he was escorted out. By Friday afternoon, the locks at the New York office had been changed.
As of now, about a half-dozen employees remain with the company, which, both camps said, as of Friday was operating as usual.