We believe that any company’s dive into a new geographic market consists of a number of layers which interact to create an operational entity in the country or region under discussion. These are:

• Regulatory and legal
• Operational
• Financial
• Environmental
• Political

We do an initial market risk assessment to establish potential risks faced by the client across each layer of the market. Focusing on the specific potential issues identified, we assist clients with pre-investment due diligence, using extensive overseas resources, proprietary data and specialist technologies. This includes using open and closed source media, analysing corporate records, sanctions and red flag checks and human source enquiries.

We then help our clients to implement and maintain the control measures required to succeed in their new market, or in an existing market which is significantly changing. To do this, we utilise a unique AnotherDay-built technology platform: Cascade.

We have been able to deploy our intelligence consultants with an intimate knowledge of these potential adversaries and their tactics, techniques, and procedures – as well as specialists in the security industry in the Middle East, with cumulative experience of over 25 years in the region.

We assess the threat intent and capability of each hostile individual before identifying risks and flashpoints between hostile groups. This in turn forms the basis of suggested solutions and mitigations. These projects can be delivered remotely, utilising the latest technologies to get us a huge amount of useful, granular information. This includes the use of recent and detailed satellite imagery, social media analytics, and human sources. While we can also arrange for site visits to get a more comprehensive intelligence picture.

Our clients usually carry out due diligence for a variety of reasons. These include but are not limited to: Investing or divesting in a company or venture, entering a new market, hiring a new key stakeholder, engaging a vendor or partner in a high risk sector or geography, engaging in a Mergers & Acquisitions process or changing the structure of the supply chain.

We conduct a variety of due diligence depending on the client, and fuse together multiple sources. These sources can include: human source enquiries, social media collection and analysis, engaging with law enforcement, accessing closed-source databases to identify adverse media or financial and corporate information, deploying consultants to carry out covert site visits, use of commercially available satellite imagery and/or shipping and aviation databases, engaging with economic and market databases to review company performance, and collecting and analysing potential threat information from the dark web.

Our Political Risk consulting team has deep experience in working with large multinationals to enter and thrive in new markets by collaborating on their strategy, integrating risk management at each stage, carrying out specific projects to forecast political and other risks, developing pre-transactional due diligence, and setting the context for our clients’ agents to take actions to reduce risk.

We tend to support our clients in market entry by focusing on how risks materialising and how to ‘design-in’ risk management into an overall strategy to prepare, advise, and assist insuring our clients. In our experience, the main obstacle to successful market entry and the proximate cause of most failures is unfamiliarity. Operating in new markets, particularly developing or emerging ones, in the same way that companies work at home is simply not an option. In many cases, these new operating models can themselves create risks that need to be managed.

As such, we help support our clients with the following services:

• Market entry process design
• Country risk analysis
• Project due diligence
• Go/no-go criteria methodology
• Other operational support