PR firm that detailed UAB's plan to disband football has ties to UA trustee

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John Johns, a UA BOT member, has ties to the public relations firm behind UAB's plan to announce its decision to disband football. (Beverly Taylor/AL.com).

The public-relations firm that detailed UAB's strategic plan to announce its decision to disband three athletic programs, including football, has ties to a member of the University of Alabama Board of Trustees.

Sard Verbinnen & Co, which put together detailed memos for how UAB should announce its decision as far back as September, previously worked with Birmingham-based Protective Life Corporation, whose chairman, president and chief executive officer is UA Board of Trustee John Johns, an Alabama graduate.

Vanessa Leonard, another trustee and Alabama graduate, sits on Protective Life's Board of Directors. Malcolm Portera, the former chancellor of the UA system, also sits on the Protective Life board.

RELATED: Who makes up the University of Alabama Board of Trustees?

Johns, who is one of the co-chairs of "The Campaign for UAB" fundraising efforts, has publicly supported UAB's decision to drop football.

"I think Dr. Watts went through a very good process," Johns told the Birmingham Business Journal in December. "He's been extremely rational, it was gut-wrenching for him, but at the end of the day, he came to the view that this was a hard decision he needed to make. "

Little is known about Sard Verbinnen's involvement with Protective Life, though the company served as a media contact for issues related to a deal with Dai-ichi Life Insurance Co.. in 2014, a sharesholder sued Protective Life after it announced that Dai-ichi, a large Japanense insurance company, would buy the company for $5.7 billion.

A secretary for Johns at Protective Life said he was out of town and that she'd be unable to connect an AL.com reporter with him. Eva Robertson, vice president of financial information and investor relations at Protective, confirmed to AL.com that the company worked with Sard Verbinnen in 2014, but "does not currently have any ongoing relationship with the firm."

Multiple messages left with Sard Verbinnen have yet to be returned.

Sard Verbinnen is well known for its work with Wall Street firms and companies in trouble, though it largely stays out of the spotlight. The company has previously worked with Goldman Sachs, Gannett, Dell and other big-name companies. In a 2013 article, Bloomberg highlighted the company's "ability to influence a major news event without leaving fingerprints."

"If you are going to be in a PR knife fight, they are the team you want," Scott Thompson, chief executive officer of Dollar Thrifty, told Bloomberg.

In detailed memos obtained by AL.com, Sard Verbinnen advised UAB to wait to make its decision until after the UA BOT met in November order to prevent "unwarranted speculation" about the BOT's involvement.

"By announcing post-season, UAB minimizes the risk of meeting disruption and mitigates any inference that the decision was driven by the Board of Trustees," the firm wrote in a memo addressed to Jim Bakken, the school's director of media relations.

AL.com reporter Connor Sheets contributed to this story.

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