News and publications

Dear Friends and Clients, Of course, this newsletter concentrates on the new VAT to be enforced on Jan. 1, 2018. There are 100+ seminars on VAT and almost every consultant’s newsletter is dealing with this tax. For Europeans, there are not really any problems with understanding the VAT system. However, as I also found out

By 1 January 2018 at the latest, the dream of many financial authorities in most countries of the world will come true: they will automatically and without any action on their part, receive information about their citizens and companies that have bank accounts abroad. It is admirable how few (German-speaking) clients react to this innovation.

Whether sports clubs, music clubs, carnival clubs or other clubs – in Central Europe a large proportion of the population is a member of one or more clubs. What many expats in the UAE do not know, however, is that association law, as we know it from Central Europe, hardly existed in the UAE up

Dear Friends and Clients, As summer approached in the northern hemisphere it is interesting to see how few reactions were made by clients who have their bank accounts abroad, despite an automatic exchange of financial information coming on stream as the ‘early adopters’ of the OECD’s Common Reporting Standard begin to exchange this year. The

Dear Friends and Clients, Ramadan and Eid al Fitr are over; the summer months are ahead. The business has already slowed down these past few weeks and probably won’t improve until September. But this is not bad news. Most of the decision makers will be on holiday in cooler parts of the world. I will

Dear Friends and Clients, Ramadan is at the doorstep. In the Surah Al-Baqarah [2:185] – Al-Qur’an al-Kareem – it reads that the Holy Scripture was revealed in the month of Ramadan. All our non – Muslim friends should be aware of the strict rules and customs during this month and should mainly refrain from disregarding these

Dear Friends and Clients, We are still enjoying the cooler weather and should spend the last few weeks if possible outdoors. But business happens mostly indoors – in soundproof rooms and without CCTV. When I still worked behind the Iron Curtain east of Austria, we preferred meetings on public park benches because we could be

Dear Friends and Clients, We had the great pleasure of welcoming Dr. Gordian Gaeta at our office event on February 23rd. He was kind enough to hold a speech for our guests about the economic outlook worldwide and especially in the Middle East region. I only want to summarize a very few points of this

Dear Friends and Clients, When we say the world is not the same as yesterday it is an all-time true saying. But maybe it has become more true recently. The future will be one of the most interesting times we have experienced in decades, maybe even since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Nearly all

Dear Friends and Clients, An interesting year has come to an end. Most of us, living and working in the UAE, have experienced some downturn in investment due to the oil price slump. But the ones who kept their eyes open found other ways to make good money. The diversification in economy and flexibility of