Why Us

We work with fewer clients in much more depth. The high-volume setup model runs a pipeline — sell a licence, hand off to back-office, move on to the next prospect. Our model is the opposite: a single consultant works with you from initial structuring conversations through licence selection, banking, residency, and ongoing compliance, with decisions reviewed against UK and Australian tax implications where relevant. The volume model wins on price and speed for simple setups; we win when the structuring matters — cross-border tax, banking complexity, family-office shape, future exit planning.

It means the bank compliance team is part of the conversation BEFORE the licence is selected — not after. The trade licence determines which banks will accept the company; the wrong licence locks you out of the banks you actually need. Most setup providers sell the licence first and let the founder discover the banking problem afterwards. Our consultants speak with banking partners about the proposed activity and ownership structure before recommending a freezone or licence type. The result: setups that bank successfully on first attempt rather than going through three failed account applications.

Yes. We hold agency agreements that allow us to set up clients in any UAE freezone or on the mainland. We’re not licence-locked to one freezone. We tend to recommend IFZA in Dubai Silicon Oasis for typical boutique clients because it’s banking-friendly, cost-effective, and well-run — but if your activity, sector, or banking needs point toward DMCC, DIFC, ADGM, JAFZA, RAKEZ, mainland Dubai, or somewhere else, we set up there. The right answer depends on what the company actually needs to do, not on what any one freezone authority happens to sell.

Yes — we have UK qualified tax consultants in-house who handle the UK side of the move. That covers Statutory Residence Test planning, the post-non-dom FIG regime, pre-departure capital gains positioning, and ongoing UK tax filings if needed. For UK founders this means UK and UAE planning happens in the same room, rather than having to coordinate between two separate firms in two separate countries. We don’t provide UK tax advice for clients without a UAE component, but for the cross-border combination, the in-house capability is part of the offering.

Bespoke per situation, but a useful benchmark: a single-shareholder UAE freezone trading company with one residency visa, full company secretarial setup, banking introduction, and first-year compliance support runs around AED 41,795 (approximately £8,700 / US$11,400). That’s the price of the package; client-specific factors (additional visas, complex shareholding, specialised banking, multiple jurisdictions) move the number up or down. Pricing is always confirmed in writing in a proposal before any work starts — no add-ons mid-process.

A standard UAE freezone setup with banking takes around 4 to 8 weeks from signed engagement to operational. The licence itself is typically issued within 1 to 2 weeks; the residency visa runs in parallel and takes 2 to 4 weeks; the bank account application is the longest single step at 3 to 6 weeks depending on the bank, the activity, and how clean the documentation pack is. Faster setups are possible — we’ve completed simple cases in under 2 weeks — but most cases involve some banking back-and-forth that we’d rather get right than rush.

Founders and investors who are past the ‘is the UAE a good idea’ stage and into the ‘how do I do this properly’ stage. Most are running an established business (often a UK Limited Company, an Australian Pty Ltd, or a European structure) and are setting up the UAE entity as part of a broader plan — sometimes alongside a personal relocation, sometimes as a holding structure, sometimes as a regional operating base. Typical revenue ranges are £250k to £20m in the existing business; typical client industries are professional services, e-commerce, technology, real estate, family office, and consulting. We’re a poor fit for very early-stage founders shopping on price alone.

Yes. The UK focus is one specialism, not a restriction. We regularly set up UAE structures for Australian, European (especially Irish, German, French, Dutch, Spanish, Italian), South African, and Asian founders. The cross-border tax expertise on the home-country side varies by jurisdiction — for UK we handle in-house; for other countries we coordinate with the client’s existing tax adviser at home and bring our UAE-side structuring knowledge alongside. The setup, banking, residency, and ongoing UAE compliance work is the same regardless of where you’re moving from.

Activities we won’t take on include: cryptocurrency exchanges and crypto trading platforms (regulatory complexity outside our specialism); regulated financial services that require DFSA or FSRA licensing (we’ll refer to specialists); cannabis or CBD businesses (regulatory ambiguity in UAE); high-risk gaming/gambling operations; any business where the source-of-funds story isn’t documentable; and any client who can’t or won’t engage with the substance and compliance requirements that come with a properly structured UAE setup. We turn away around 1 in 5 enquiries — usually because the fit isn’t right rather than the activity being problematic per se.

Yes — and most of our work is actually the ongoing side, not the setup. Once a UAE company is operating, the compliance load includes annual licence renewals, visa renewals, audited financial statements, corporate tax registration and filing, VAT registration and filing where applicable, UBO declarations, AML compliance, and any changes to ownership or activity. We offer this as a single combined ongoing-support package, priced annually. Clients typically engage us for setup AND ongoing — we’re set up for long-term relationships, not transactional setup-and-leave work.

Often yes, depending on which freezones are involved and the activity. Some freezones allow direct migration in or out (regulatory transfer with no need to wind up and re-form); others require the company to be wound up and a new company formed in the new freezone, with assets and contracts assigned across. We see this most often with founders who set up cheaply in a northern emirates freezone, then ran into banking problems, and need to migrate to a Dubai-based freezone like IFZA or DMCC to fix the banking. The migration itself is usually 2 to 4 weeks; the harder work is unwinding accounts, contracts, and visas at the old freezone.

It depends on why it was rejected. UAE banks reject applications for many reasons: incomplete documentation, source-of-funds concerns, sector concerns (some banks won’t touch certain industries), nationality concerns (politically exposed jurisdictions), insufficient substance in the UAE (no real office, no real local activity), or sometimes for no clearly stated reason at all. We learn the actual reason from the bank and address it — that may mean re-applying with more documentation, applying to a different bank with a different risk appetite for that activity, or restructuring the application. We’ve never had a client end up without UAE banking; we have had clients where the second or third bank was the right one.

Not in-house. For clients moving from Australia or from a European jurisdiction, we coordinate with the client’s existing tax adviser at home. Where the client doesn’t have one, we refer to specialists we’ve worked with before in the relevant country. The UAE side and the cross-border interaction we handle directly. The reason we don’t claim Australian or European tax capability in-house is the same reason our UK tax capability is genuine: tax advice is jurisdiction-specific and requires real local qualified professionals — we’d rather refer you to the right person than pretend to cover everything.

Two things: transparency and scope. Pricing is always confirmed in writing in a proposal before any work starts — you see the full fee, what it covers, and what it doesn’t, in one document. There are no surprise add-ons during the process; if scope changes after signing, we discuss the change and confirm the new number before doing the work. The fees themselves are higher than the volume setup providers and lower than the international Big Four advisory firms — we sit in the boutique advisory tier where the fee buys you a real consultant rather than a sales call followed by a back-office handoff.

Yes — within reason. Many of our clients are happy to speak briefly with prospective clients in similar situations (UK founders to UK founders, family-office founders to family-office founders, e-commerce founders to e-commerce founders). Some are not — confidentiality and time are theirs to give. If you’re considering engaging us and a reference would help, ask in your initial conversation and we’ll arrange one where we can. We’d rather you spoke to an existing client than took our word for it.