New German Office Will Assist Clients in Central and Eastern Europe

Press Contact:
Samira Mirza
202.719.1700
smirza@diligencellc.com

Berlin, Germany – February 2, 2006 – Diligence, the business intelligence and risk management services firm, has opened an office in Berlin, headed by its new managing director for Germany, Torsten Hinkelmann. The new office will focus on serving businesses and financial institutions in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland and in assisting these clients as they seek to enter and expand in markets in the East.

“We believe that the German market is extremely well-suited for the information-gathering and risk mitigation services that Diligence provides,” said the firm’s Executive Chairman, Richard Burt, the former U.S Ambassador to Germany. These services include transaction and competitive intelligence, due diligence support, transparency and compliance consulting, and brand and intellectual property protection.

Torsten Hinkelmann added that the demand, in particular, for due diligence support was growing in Germany because of increasingly complex and rigorous regulatory requirements flowing out of the European Union, the OECD’s Financial Action Task Force and the Wolfsberg Group of banks and financial institutions. Other information services provided by Diligence, such as competitive intelligence, will help companies deal with the risks of bid-rigging and procurement and procurement fraud.

“While Germany has the largest economy in the EU, a growing number of companies here want to successfully bridge the gap between Western standards and Eastern European opportunities,” said Hinkelmann, an expert in asset tracing.

Before joining Diligence, Hinkelmann served as special advisor to the Chief Operating Officer of Winterthur Insurance in Switzerland. At Winterthur, he was responsible for tracing dormant and hidden assets. Prior to his assignment at Winterthur, he was responsible for the issue management at Credit Suisse Life and Pension. Torsten Hinkelmann also serves as Director of the International Commission on Holocaust Era Insurance Claims (Eagleburger-Commission). He holds a Master Degree in Political Sciences.

Diligence was founded in 2000 by a group of former members of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, and Britain's MI5 Intelligence Service. The firm's mission is to bring to bear the founders' expertise, experience and network of relationships to provide clients with a higher standard of business intelligence and analysis, risk assessment and due diligence support for transactions. In this role, Diligence provides companies with both the information and analysis to enable them to identify, manage, and mitigate risks stemming either from the normal flow of business or from unanticipated contingencies.

Diligence’s headquarters are in Washington, DC and in addition to its new Berlin office, the firm has offices in New York City, Miami, London, Brussels, and Moscow.