Dubai · Situation
Turnaround and restructuring in Dubai
Turnaround work is where interim leadership is most obviously the right instrument. The mandate is intense, short and specific, and it frequently requires someone with no history in the business and no relationships to protect.
The first job is almost always cash visibility. The second is credibility with lenders. Everything structural comes after those two.
What this calls for
- Immediate thirteen-week cash visibility and control over outflows
- Lender and creditor negotiation with a defensible plan behind it
- Cost base restructuring, including the employment cost of doing it
- Reporting the board and the bank will believe
- A stabilisation plan with milestones somebody is accountable for
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.
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.