Something has shifted in how the Gulf’s most serious businesses decide who to trust with their hardest problems. For a long time the logic was simple. When the stakes were high, you hired the biggest name in the room. A global brand on the engagement letter was a form of insurance, and no one was ever criticised for it.
That logic was built for a slower world. It is now being quietly retired, and I started Oblique Consult in 2018 to be ready for what comes next.
Regulatory Change in the Gulf
The Gulf has compressed roughly a decade of regulatory change into three or four years.
The UAE introduced Corporate Tax. Saudi Arabia is deepening transfer pricing and Zakat enforcement. Pillar Two has arrived for the multinationals here. This removes the largest firms’ single greatest advantage, the comfort of precedent. When a regime is brand new, there is no decade-old playbook to localise. There is only the regulation, the reality of operating in Riyadh and Dubai, and the question of who genuinely understands both. We built Oblique around expertise native to this region.
The large-firm model is an extraordinary machine, and a slow one by design. Layers of review, sign-off chains, conflict checks that can outlast the work itself, and billing structures that quietly reward scope expansion. That made sense when clients had time to wait. Most serious businesses here no longer do.
A board needs a defensible position before a deadline, from the person accountable for it, not a junior team assembled after the partner who won the work has moved to the next pitch. Reputation gets a firm into the conversation. Speed and seniority win the mandate. We recently prevailed in a tax arbitration in Saudi Arabia, the kind of fight where being fast and senior is the whole game.
Trust is Capital in the Gulf
Trust in the Gulf is personal. The person who understood your business last year is the person who understands it today, and that continuity is what allows for candour.
A trusted advisor tells you the thing you do not want to hear, which is far harder inside a structure where the relationship is managed commercially at the top.
AI Embedded Finance
Technology lets us deliver this at the standard a premium client expects. We do not simply advise on it, we build it. Simpla, our AI accounting and tax platform, and our own internal operating system embed intelligent workflows into how the work gets done. The model is human-led and AI-powered. AI has raised the floor on what good advisory looks like, because clients now arrive better informed than ever, and the advisor who adds value is the one who knows which answer is right and what to do about it on Monday.
Our people live in that space, and a human stays in the loop on everything that matters. We are applying the same conviction to talent, building a headhunting platform to bring the region’s sharpest finance minds to the firms that need them.
The largest firms are not going anywhere yet the centre of gravity is moving. The market is separating into firms hired for the comfort of the name on the door, and specialists hired when the answer genuinely matters.
We are comfortable being the second kind, growing into Saudi Arabia and serving an increasingly premium roster of Fortune 100, Fortune 500 and regionally listed clients who would rather have the sharpest people in the region than the largest.
If you still choose your advisors the way the last decade taught you to, it is worth asking whether that decade is still the one you operate in. The bar has moved.
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