July 24, 2025

Secrets of Successful Tax Leadership in MENA's Tech Industry | Stuart Ramsay

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Stuart Ramsay, now Director and Group Head of Tax at AD Ports Group (note: episode was filmed while he was still at Dubizzle Group), joined us to discuss building a strategic in-house tax function from scratch in a fast-growing MENA tech company. In this episode, he shares:

• A major leadership challenge (moving from a 50 000-employee logistics giant to a 5 000-employee tech scale-up with no existing tax team) and how he solved it through a “mini tax due-diligence” in his first 30 days.

• Real-world results, including cutting potential compliance filings from 100 to 12 through entity rationalisation and introducing private GPT translation that saves roughly $200 and three days per Arabic tax return.

• Best practices for UAE corporate tax Day 1 readiness, VAT specialisation, and low-budget tech adoption that other in-house teams can replicate.

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Where to find Stuart Ramsay: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stuart-ramsay/

Where to find Stevi Frooninckx: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevifrooninckx

In this episode, we cover:

(0:00) Intro and Stuart’s journey from Glasgow to Dubai

(4:03) Why the GCC moved from 5 % VAT to a 9 % corporate tax

(18:25) Pillar II plus UAE CT: using one data set for both regimes

(32:27) From DP World to Dubizzle: smaller company, bigger influence

(40:05) The power of saying “I don’t know” to win executive trust

(42:18) Mini tax due-diligence: a 30-day map of filings and risks

(43:45) Filling blind spots: hiring a VAT specialist and adding AI translation