Dubai · Situation
Preparing for an exit in Dubai
Value is lost in diligence, and it is lost on things that were fixable years earlier — customer concentration nobody addressed, contracts that do not assign, a finance function that cannot produce a quality of earnings, key-person dependency written all over the org chart.
The work is temporary and the deadline is real. A fractional or interim mandate covering the eighteen months before a process is one of the highest-return uses of the model.
What this calls for
- Quality of earnings and normalised EBITDA a buyer will accept
- Contracts that assign, and customer concentration addressed
- Key-person dependency reduced and documented
- Clean corporate records, cap table and intercompany positions
- A management team that can present without the owner
What is specific to United Arab Emirates
- Corporate tax and the audit and transfer-pricing wave behind it created acute demand for a real CFO among owner-managed firms that have never had one — a compliance-triggered, time-boxed need.
- The founder-to-second-generation transition in Dubai’s family businesses needs an outsider with authority to install governance without displacing the family. An interim mandate is politically survivable where a permanent hire is not.
- A full-time expatriate package carries housing, schooling and flights that make a mis-hire an AED 1m+ mistake. Fractional removes the relocation bet and terminates on 30–60 days with no gratuity accrual.
- Authority in Dubai’s large family groups is held personally by the owner or chairman, not by the executive title. A fractional CFO’s first task is often creating a decision framework where none existed, and the mandate is granted informally by the principal long before it appears on an org chart.
Roles usually bought
CFO
Fractional CFO in Dubai
Cash, controls, reporting and the numbers investors and lenders will actually believe.
COOFractional COO in Dubai
Turning a business that works because people try hard into one that works because it is designed to.
CTOFractional CTO in Dubai
Technical judgment for companies whose product decisions have outgrown their engineering.
The Dubai numbers
Fractional, per monthAED 5,000–10,000/month early-stage; AED 11,000–25,000 for a growth SME at one to three days a week; AED 25,000–40,000+ at three to four days. The practical band for a genuine former CFO is AED 15,000–40,000/month, USD 4,100–10,900, on a six to twelve month retainer.
Full-time, all-inCooper Fitch puts a large-corporate CFO at AED 81,000–122,000/month and an SME CFO at AED 61,000–92,000. All-in for a mid-market CFO or COO including housing, school fees, flights, medical and gratuity: AED 1.1m–1.9m a year, USD 300,000–517,000.
SeveranceMainland end-of-service gratuity after one year: 21 days’ basic wage per year for the first five years, 30 days thereafter, capped at two years’ wage and calculated on basic salary only. DIFC is different — the funded DEWS scheme takes 5.83% of basic wage monthly rising to 8.33% after five years, with no cap.