Family groups and multi-entity holdings

Family groups rarely have a finance problem in one company. They have a visibility problem across several.

The situation this usually starts from

The pattern repeats across Riyadh and the wider GCC:

• Several legal entities, each with its own bookkeeping, and no consolidated view anyone trusts.
• Related-party transactions between the companies that nobody has documented properly.
• A capable accountant per entity, and nobody above them who can challenge the numbers.
• Decisions made on the principal's judgment, which has been right for years, but with no numbers to test the next one against.
• A bank, a partner or a prospective investor now asking for the kind of reporting the group has never produced.

Nothing here is a crisis. That is precisely why it goes unaddressed until an audit, a financing or a succession conversation forces it.

What I do

The goal is a group that can be understood from the outside without changing how the family runs it.

• Consolidation that holds up. One chart of accounts across entities, intercompany and related-party transactions identified and eliminated properly, and a monthly consolidated pack that reconciles.
• Governance sized to the group. Approval limits, separation of duties and audit logging that match how decisions are actually made. Not a corporate bureaucracy imported from a multinational.
• A control environment an outsider recognises. The controls an external audit, a lender or diligence expects to find, documented rather than assumed.
• Tax handled at group level. Zakat, VAT and withholding tax planned across entities ahead of deadlines, including how the intercompany flows are treated.
• Reporting the principals will actually read. One page that answers what the group made, what it holds, and what the cash is doing, before the detail behind it.

The proof

I built the finance, HR and IT shared-services function for a multi-entity studio group in Riyadh, then designed and shipped the operating system it runs on: multi-company from the ground up, with approval workflows, separation of duties, audit logging and per-company data isolation, covering GL, AR/AP, VAT, HR, payroll and GOSI in English and Arabic.

Before that I led FP&A for a multi-sector group across manufacturing, telecom and MEP, running investment feasibility studies and scenario planning and designing the internal-control structures and SOPs that raised process discipline across the group.

Who this fits

A good fit if: you run two or more entities, you want consolidated numbers and proper governance, and you would rather have one senior person part time than build a group finance department.

Not a fit if: what you need is bookkeeping capacity. That is a different hire, and a cheaper one.

How it works commercially

Usually fractional: a fixed number of days a month on an ongoing basis, because governance is a habit rather than a project. Where the group needs a specific build, a consolidation model or an ERP, that runs as a fixed-scope project alongside.