Geopolitical Risk Becomes a Boardroom Issue
Het Financieele Dagblad · 24 July 2026
Market signal
Het Financieele Dagblad reports a sharp rise in demand for geopolitical advice — one senior adviser describing a shift from a handful of enquiries a year to enquiries arriving every week. The war in Ukraine, US–China rivalry, expanding sanctions regimes, cyber threats and renewed policy volatility have moved from the margins of the risk register to the centre of the board agenda.
Why this matters
For many organisations, political developments now arrive as financial decision-making events — repricing assets, altering counterparty exposure and reshaping the assumptions beneath signed contracts. Boards increasingly require independent financial judgement under genuine uncertainty; transaction assumptions demand stress-testing before commitment, not after; and financial disputes grow more complex as geopolitical exposure affects valuation and contractual performance.
HALD perspective
HALD complements strategy and geopolitical advisers rather than competing with them. Where they explain what is happening, HALD establishes what it means financially — and whether the resulting decision will hold up under audit, regulatory review or litigation. Every engagement is led personally by a former CFO/CRO with 25+ years of international executive responsibility inside regulated financial institutions.
Source
Analysis based on Het Financieele Dagblad, “Een steeds vijandigere wereld is een goudmijn voor consultants”, July 2026.