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Timios launches in the UAE, led by Martin Chulov

Timios is launching in the United Arab Emirates, with Martin Chulov leading our activities from Dubai. The launch brings our business intelligence and investigative capabilities closer to companies, investors and advisers whose decisions in the UAE often have implications across the Gulf and the wider Middle East.

These cross-border interests require an understanding of markets with distinct centres of power and ways of doing business. Regional diplomacy and shifting alliances can also change the prospects of a project. Understanding how these factors interact takes local knowledge, reliable sources and the ability to connect developments across borders.

Martin Chulov

Martin’s career spans investigative reporting in Australia and extensive coverage of the Middle East. His reporting on the Bali bombings earned him a Walkley Award, one of Australia’s most prestigious journalism honours, in 2003. He began reporting from the Middle East in 2005 and joined The Guardian in 2008, first as its Baghdad correspondent and later as its Middle East correspondent, covering the Arab uprisings and their aftermath. His work earned him the Orwell Prize for Journalism and the Foreign Press Association’s Journalist of the Year award in 2015. He was subsequently highly commended for Foreign Reporter of the Year at the UK’s 2018 National Press Awards.

Martin brings extensive experience of field investigation, assessing sources and explaining complex political developments. From Dubai, he will work with Timios’s wider team to apply that experience to clients’ commercial and strategic questions across the region.

What we do

Our work will draw on Timios’s established capabilities:

• Due diligence. Investigating the backgrounds, ownership, and business relationships of prospective partners and counterparties, beyond basic registry checks.
• Strategic mapping and geopolitical analysis. Identifying the people, institutions and political developments that can affect an investment, market entry or existing operation.
• Investigations and dispute support. Establishing facts, tracing assets, and developing evidence to support clients and their legal advisers in complex matters.

These assignments combine enquiries on the ground with open-source research and specialist financial and technical analysis. The purpose is to give clients a clear account of what is known, what remains uncertain and what it means for the ventures they pursue.