Fractional CFO services

We take the chief financial officer's seat in your group, for the days the mandate sets. The Managing Partner carries the role personally: capital allocation, lender and investor relationships, group reporting, and the financial view behind each decision that reaches the board.

• A named CFO, the Managing Partner, accountable to the chairman or chief executive.
• The Principal's Brief: one private weekly note with the group's position, what changed and one decision for you to make.
• A group reporting pack the board can read in one sitting, with each entity, brand and channel on the same basis.
• A rolling 13-week cash view and a 12-month forecast with named assumptions.
• Capital allocation papers for each significant decision, kept with the reasoning behind them.
• Direct management of lender, investor and auditor relationships on your behalf.

• Your board pack arrives ready sooner after month end, and you see the days it took.
• You see return on capital by entity, brand and channel.
• You see headroom against facility covenants in advance.
• Every board decision rests on a written financial case.

Most groups in this position have accurate bookkeeping and no one who turns it into decisions. Entity results arrive late and cannot be compared, lenders ask questions nobody has prepared for, and capital goes to whichever brand argued loudest. The chairman ends up carrying the financial judgement alone.

• You see entity accounts weeks after month end, and they do not reconcile to the group view.
• A bank or investor has asked for a model that does not exist.
• Two brands compete for the same capital and no one can say which earns more after all costs.
• Your finance manager is strong on control but has never faced a lender or a board.
• The next generation is joining and cannot read how the group makes its money.

Chairmen and principals of family-owned groups whose entities have grown faster than their finance function, and chief executives of investor-backed groups who answer to a board and cannot yet justify a full-time CFO at the level they need.

Qasim Abbas has spent more than 16 years inside Gulf family-based and venture-backed groups, answered for treasury above USD 50M at group level and worked fundraising through seed, Series A and Series B. You get that judgement in your boardroom every month, applied to your group's numbers.

We start with the Control Diagnostic, then take over the reporting calendar and cash view on whatever ledger your group runs, including Xero, QuickBooks, Zoho Books, NetSuite and Oracle. See how fees work.

How is this different from hiring a financial controller?

A controller keeps the numbers right. This seat decides what the numbers mean for capital, lenders and the board, and answers for it.

Can this become a full-time hire later?

Yes. When the group is ready, we write the role, run the search with you and hand over cleanly.

Request a private briefing and tell us what is on the board's agenda. We arrange a confidential conversation with the Managing Partner, followed by the Control Diagnostic.