Greetings from a festive UAE!

After the Holy Month of Ramadan, Eid Al Fitr has arrived and gone, and if you're reading this in the Middle East, you can feel the celebration in the air that we're just coming out of.

Now that you've had a few days off, you can * ahem * catch up on your Evoke newsletter reading. This week we remind you that Due Diligence is an essential element to successful business transactions. We need to be getting into the habit of taking the time to assess the value of a business and to verify the information pertaining to the business in order to determine whether to proceed. 

In 'Shaping Tomorrow' we have our usual fascinating figures from Statista. Are you a renter or an owner? Switzerland, Germany and France dominate in the rental market but in Russia and China, there is a far greater preference to buy. We also look at how productive an hour of work is around the world in terms of GDP per hour. Ireland seems to be leading the pack on productivity...

A lot of us at Evoke are swimmers so we have a vested interest in U.S. Olympic champion, Michael Phelps. But now that he is retired, what does his current diet look like? GQ gets a breakdown of his new way of life and it's definitely not a 10,000 calorie consumption!

Our quote this week comes from the winning Winston Churchill – in these times his sage words are a delightful pick-me-up, as is the song of the week: All That Jazz. Get your glad rags on...

Team E.

WHY DUE DILLIGENCE IS

AS IMPORTANT AS EVER

A changing world requires trusted and experienced intelligence, security and communications. Before we dive into any kind or scope of work, the first thing we do is dig deep into your surrounding world – otherwise known as Due Diligence.

The work we do involves careful attention to the political, economic, cultural, cyber and crime/terrorism-related challenges throughout the world because brand safety and reputation management are paramount in today's atmosphere. What ensures that businesses mitigate risk and brand damage, is a thorough examination of the context in which we are working in. For example, before you invest your money into a project or cause, we do our homework on your behalf to give you deep insights, knowledge and understanding of the terrain you are moving into.

Our due diligence goes beyond KYC risk intelligence to give our customers a full 360° picture of who you're working with. The options for executing Due Diligence to harness safety, security and mitigate risk are fully customized to your requirements. It's essentially a lot of detective work through our far reaching CAST system. We do like to think of ourselves as the Sherlock Holmes of the consultancy field... with a little data mining help of course!

SHAPING TOMORROW

We’re always on the look out for dynamic change makers, disruptors and new information to fuel our own dexterity and creativity. So, this section sees a few of our recent picks on how the world’s outlook is changing. We hope these little nuggets will help you land on that 'aha!' moment you were looking for!

OUR DIVERSIONS

We know everyone says it's not all work, it's about play, too – and as much as we don't want to sound like a broken record, there is truth in the truism. Like we said earlier, we are all about ingesting the complex and the trivial in equal measure. In fact, we love nothing more than thinking deeply about the more 'playful' things in life. Read ' em and ponder away.

TODAY'S QUOTE

Believe in yourself and you'll do wonders. Simple as.

THE OUTLOOK

Who else is thinking of the song, 'I'm Blue' by Eiffel 65 right now?