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Nizar Manek

Founder & Managing Director

nizar.manek@periplus-research.com Arrange a call

Leads Periplus, its assessments and strategic advice. Over fifteen years, built the in-country networks, human-source collection and assessment methods, and compliance protocols behind hundreds of specialised engagements in frontier and emerging economies. Those networks have supplied underlying source reporting for client engagements delivered through the top-tier strategic intelligence and disputes advisory firms, alongside work for arbitration practices, development finance institutions and European foreign ministries, and on Track II peace processes and mediation.

Earlier career as a correspondent for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, and Africa Confidential, covering the Horn of Africa and Red Sea, Middle East and North Africa, and West Africa and Sahel through multiple regime changes. Work in the Financial Times, Jane's Intelligence Review, Foreign Affairs, Le Monde Diplomatique, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte, and London Review of Books. Academic work on political economy and ethnography with Harvard’s Center for International Development. Member, UN Security Council Affairs Division Pool of Experts. Recognition from the European Press Prize, Overseas Press Club of America, Foreign Press Association in London and Transparency International. Education: LSE, Columbia Law and Business Schools, SOAS. Based in London; previously Addis Ababa, Cairo, Tunis, Istanbul, Yerevan, Athens.

Nizar Maneknizarmanek.com

Periplus works selectively, through professional referral or direct enquiry, on matters where a consequential decision turns on what the formal record leaves unresolved. Initial conversations establish what is at stake, which questions need answering and when the client needs to act. Periplus assesses whether it has the access and expertise the work requires. Engagements are structured as projects, phased assignments or retainers, with scope, deliverables and terms agreed before work begins. Enquiries are confidential; where preferred, an NDA is signed before substantive details are shared. In disputes, Periplus is instructed by law firms and in-house legal teams. The intended use of the findings is agreed at the outset, together with any requirements for provenance, source permissions and preservation of material for possible use in proceedings. Counsel-directed assignments are structured to preserve any applicable privilege.

“The agreement was secure on paper. Periplus established what the government actually intended. We knew who was directing the decision before each round of negotiation.”
General Counsel, Multinational Corporation

“Our diligence was thorough, but important questions remained unanswered. Periplus gave us the counterparty picture our advisers couldn’t reach. We repriced before committing.”
Managing Partner, Infrastructure Fund

“Periplus established the facts behind the state’s position, including who had driven the decision and how it moved through government. It changed our case and settlement strategy.”
Partner, International Arbitration Practice

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