By Scott Cairns
One of the mistakes I regularly see international businesses make in the UAE is assuming that the corporate structure they established when first entering the market will remain suitable indefinitely.
It often will not.
A company may initially establish a relatively simple UAE entity because the priority is to start trading, employ someone locally, service a particular client or minimise their cost for market entry. A few years later, the same business may have several shareholders, operations across multiple countries, new business activities, external investors and a very different tax and regulatory position.
At that point, the question is not just whether the existing companies are compliant. It should be whether the structure still makes commercial sense.
