The politics of resources redefined™

Assessments & Assurance

Achieving Project Outcomes

Context: A private equity client with investments in several challenging jurisdictions in Africa and Latin America sought an independent review of its approach to mitigating corruption risks at investee companies.
Support: We benchmarked our client’s policies and approach against those of comparable investors in order to ensure that our client was meeting international best practice standards and the expectations of international enforcement authorities.
Outcome: We identified several ways to help our client to better protect itself from corruption risks, including recommendations on refining due diligence approaches for new investments and ongoing monitoring of compliance by investee companies.

Context: A major global mining company was looking to become an industry leader on socio-economic development and a ‘partner of choice’ for host governments.
Support: Critical Resource provided an independent, external analysis of the client’s programmes in this area, and compared its approach with those of its competitors and with industry best-practice standards.
Outcome: Based on our analysis, we provided recommendations on how our client’s approach could be better strengthened to improve its impact. This included an engagement plan for the company’s CEO with key international figures and the development of a flagship socio-economic development initiative.

Context: A leading international development agency was seeking to strengthen its understanding of the employment potential of the extractive sectors in seven East African countries to inform public-private partnership discussions on skills development with major investors.
Support: We provided an in-depth review of best-practice approaches to local hiring and sourcing by industry, government and donors, as well as analysis of the employment potential of the extractive sectors in the target countries. We also provided practical support to help our client establish partnerships with oil and gas companies on skills development.
Outcome: Our client successfully attracted co-financing from three other international development agencies and established partnerships on skills and enterprise development with several international oil companies.

Context: A multi-national energy company with a presence in 18 countries across five continents was looking to make new investments in a range of jurisdictions and wanted an independent review of its approach to new country entry.
Support: We conducted an external assessment of the company’s non-technical risk assessment review process, which included benchmarking our client against four peer companies. Our report highlighted strengths in our client’s approach and provided recommendations on how to strengthen it further.
Outcome: Based on our review, our client put in place a more robust approach to new country entry, including by broadening the scope of issues to be assessed during due diligence assignments, strengthening internal quality control processes and hiring additional team members with the remit of reviewing political and stakeholder risks.