Menas has been helping multinational companies operate in the Middle East, Africa, and other emerging markets since the late 1970s. We are a strategic and political risk consultancy providing actionable intelligence for our clients, from country entry strategies, to due diligence, stakeholder analysis, political risk reports, market assessments, problem solving and exit strategies.

Initially, we were mainly engaged in creating and managing teams of country experts to work for legal teams on international border disputes and commercial arbitration cases.

Menas has worked on eight international border disputes before the International Court of Justice or arbitration panels and the majority of the large oil cases before the US-Iran Claims Tribunal.

Besides the legal cases themselves, we have also advised international oil companies on numerous land and maritime border disputes.

More recently our work for law firms has tended to concentrate on political risk insurance cases. The affected businesses have ranged from oil refineries in the FSU to car showrooms in Kuwait, LNG plants in Egypt, upstream oil assets in Myanmar, Chinese banana imports, and confiscated oil rigs in Argentina and Venezuela.

Since October 1988 the majority of our consultancy work has been conducted for oil companies and other multinational clients. These range from the super-majors to very small IOCs with only a single international asset. We have undertaken many hundreds of ad-hoc consultancy projects on around 60 different countries for 40-50 clients.

Menas has had to become more flexible in the range of consultancy projects we offer as companies are faced with growing legal requirements (e.g. FCPA and UK Bribery Act) and pressure from host governments, shareholders, press, and NGOs to act as more socially responsible investors (e.g. stricter environmental legislation; local content requirements etc.). The range and complexity of our work has therefore developed over time from relatively straight-forward political risk reports to encompass all parts of the business cycle. For example, the volume of due diligence and ‘know your client’ projects we have undertaken has significantly increased since 9/11.

We have also expanded our business activities to include online publications on some of the regions we cover, and both private and public country briefings. The latter is a micro-consultancy service that allows clients to put their questions directly to our consultants via a confidential phone call or written report.