Brightwater Due Diligence provides corporate intelligence and risk advisory services to a broad set of clients, including private equity firms, private wealth management firms, investment banks and NGOs, typically in advance of high-value or high-risk transactions.

Our mandate is simple — to ensure that our clients have an early and unencumbered view of any potential legal, reputational or regulatory risks posed by their prospective business partners. 

The company was founded by Max Block, who has over 20 years of experience in the corporate intelligence and risk advisory space. He has worked for top-tier consulting firms and in-house with the Financial Crimes Compliance (FCC) unit of one of the largest global financial services firms in the world.  He has deep experience leveraging both open-source data and discreet source inquiries in the course of his research. With respect to the latter, he works closely with a trusted network of former intelligence officers and law enforcement officials in the U.S, Latin America, the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and Asia.

Max spent the first decade of his career in journalism, producing stories in Afghanistan, Iraq (embedded), Mali, Honduras, Nicaragua, Tierra del Fuego and elsewhere. He is a graduate of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism (2000) and Vassar College (1992).