Group Financial Controller for a Pakistan-headquartered conglomerate's Dubai expansion
Build out the Group FC role for a brand-new Dubai operating subsidiary of a Karachi-headquartered conglomerate, with the additional constraint that the candidate had to be acceptable to both the Dubai MD and the Karachi-based Group CFO.
“Imran ran our search like an audit engagement. Half-way through I realised we were getting a better-built finance hire than we had built for ourselves the last three times.”
Background
The client had operated a small UAE representative office for seven years but was incorporating a full operating subsidiary in Q2 2024 to support four of the seven group businesses' GCC ambitions. The Group CFO needed an FC who could close the books in Dubai under IFRS, manage a small treasury function, and feed clean consolidations back to the Karachi finance team — three skills that on a quiet day are all separate jobs.
The brief had three additional constraints: (a) the candidate had to be hireable on a salary band that would not provoke the existing Karachi FC team, (b) the candidate needed prior Pakistan-side career experience because of the personal-relationship dynamics with the Karachi office, and (c) the candidate had to be senior enough to push back on the Dubai MD when needed.
Approach
We mapped the GCC market for Pakistan-side qualified finance leaders. The available pool was approximately 60 named candidates, of which 24 were known to us already and 36 were sourced through cold approach.
We ran 31 first-round conversations across five weeks. The conversations did double duty — they were both qualifying calls and market-mapping for two pending searches we expected from the Group CFO's peers.
We presented a shortlist of 4 in week 5. Two were declined by the client at first read because their salary expectations were inside the band but at the high end and the CFO judged that their negotiating posture would land them above the band by offer time. The remaining 2 progressed to on-site loops.
The successful candidate was a CA Pakistan + ACCA dual-qualified senior with eight years post-qualification, four of which were in the Dubai office of a Karachi-headquartered conglomerate of similar size — a near-ideal demographic match.
Outcome
The placed candidate landed his first month-end cleanly and has now closed eight quarterly cycles at the Dubai entity.
The Group CFO referred us to two peer family-office CFOs in the year that followed. One of those referrals became the Treasury Manager search now live on our /openings page.
Metrics
| Time-to-shortlist | 5 weeks |
| Time-to-offer-accepted | 9 weeks |
| Conversations conducted (long-list) | 31 |
| Final-round candidates presented | 4 |
| Tenure at one-year mark | In seat |