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Nizar Manek

Founder & Managing Director

Over fifteen years before founding Periplus, built the methodology, human-source networks and the coordination structures behind them, and legal and compliance protocols underpinning hundreds of frontier-market engagements—for the top-tier strategic intelligence and disputes advisory firms, arbitration practices, development finance institutions, European foreign ministries, and Track II peace processes. Member, UN Security Council Affairs Division Pool of Experts.

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, with 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; recognition from the European Press Prize, Overseas Press Club of America, Foreign Press Association in London, 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 Research works selectively, through professional referral or direct enquiry, on hard cases where formal analysis leaves the decisive variable unresolved—and where the matter is consequential enough to warrant reaching it. Engagements are structured as retainer, project, or phase-based arrangements across defined geographies and sectors. Initial conversations explore alignment, regional scope, and methodological fit. Enquiries are confidential. For counsel-led matters, Periplus works within privilege-sensitive workstreams, with provenance and chain-of-custody documentation to support legal strategy. Where findings will be tested in proceedings, the work is built to withstand it.

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“The agreement was secure on paper. Periplus established what the government actually intended toward it—and where the decision had moved—before each round of negotiation.”
General Counsel, Multinational Corporation

“Our diligence was thorough and told us nothing we could act on. Periplus gave us the enforcement picture our advisers couldn’t reach—we repriced before committing.”
Managing Partner, Infrastructure Fund

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