The coming year will continue to astound us with risk that is new, perplexing and, at times, violent.So says the annual RiskMap from Control Risks, the survey of business risk from the consultancy. Richard Fenning, pictured, CEO of Control Risks, said that international business has to navigate a narrow and sometimes perilous channel between an increasingly globalised market and a resurgence of national self-interest by individual countries. “We highlighted this in RiskMap 2014, and the trend has accelerated rapidly.”

He warned that the world seems more discordant and on edge than at any time in recent memory. “Nowhere is this more apparent than in the cyber world. There is little immediate prospect that the threat of cyber crime will diminish. For that to happen there would need to be a degree of international agreement, co-operation and policing that is years away. So long as nation states of all shapes and sizes battle each other online (it is the cheapest form of warfare since the bow and arrow), there will be the space and technological spin-off for criminals and others to target companies, with only the lightest of curbs on their malevolent ingenuity.”

The document as in previous years ranks each country by political and security risk: the UK is rated as low in each category. For more details from the consultancy email riskmap@controlrisks.com, and visit www.controlrisks.com/en/register-for-riskmap-report-2015.

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