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Nizar Manek

Founder & Managing Director

In the fifteen years before founding Periplus, built the methodology, the human-source networks, the coordination structures behind them, and the 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 multiple Track II peace processes, all under NDA. 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 establish the question, coverage, and fit. Enquiries are confidential; where preferred, an NDA is signed before anything is discussed. In disputes work, Periplus is instructed by law firms and in-house legal teams, and 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 counterparty picture our advisers couldn’t reach. We repriced before committing.”
Managing Partner, Infrastructure Fund

“We had the award; the debtor still had the assets. Periplus established where the value could be reached and what protected it. We re-aimed the enforcement.”
Principal, Litigation Funder

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