Exclusive Interview with Mr. Sayed A. Chief Business Officer Graystone Capital
As GCC markets mature and interest rates fluctuate globally, what specific alternative financing structures (such as Sukuk, private equity, or structured finance) are proving most effective for companies looking to improve their capital efficiency?
Sukuk is the clear winner, and the numbers are not subtle. Sukuk has climbed to a record 41% share of GCC debt capital market volumes, growing close to 22% year on year while conventional bonds managed 7.2%. The GCC debt capital market is on track to pass $1.25 trillion this year.
But I would caution against reading that as a religious preference story. It is a pricing and tenor story. Sukuk taps a structurally captive pool of Islamic liquidity that has to be deployed, which frequently delivers tighter pricing and longer tenors than the equivalent conventional issue. For a company funding a twenty year asset, matching that asset to twenty year money rather than rolling five year bank debt is the single biggest capital efficiency gain available.
Below the large caps, private credit is the real change. The GCC and Egypt private credit market has been compounding at 15% to 30% annually against a regional lending gap north of $250 billion. Mid market companies that banks would not stretch for now have a genuine alternative.
Where I see the most value, though, is receivables securitisation. It converts working capital into funding without loading the balance sheet, which matters enormously now that UAE corporate tax caps net interest deductions at 30% of EBITDA. Debt is simply less tax efficient than it was, and structures that sidestep that ceiling deserve a serious look.
• How should GCC corporate treasury teams leverage technology and digital transformation to better monitor working capital and drive smarter, more agile funding decisions?
Honestly, most regional treasuries are trying to run before they can walk. There is real appetite for AI, and a Crisil Coalition Greenwich survey of 142 large corporates this year found substantial numbers planning treasury AI deployment. But I would ask a simpler question first. Can your treasurer produce an accurate, consolidated group cash position across every bank account, in every currency, before nine o’clock this morning?
For a surprising number of GCC companies, the answer is no. They are running fragmented bank portals and spreadsheets, and the group position takes two days to assemble. At that point it is history, not information. No amount of AI fixes that, because the model inherits the same broken data.
So the sequence matters. Bank connectivity and API integration first, so cash visibility is automatic and daily. A proper treasury management system second, so forecasting is systematic rather than heroic. Only then does AI earn its place, and it earns it in forecasting accuracy, anomaly detection in payment runs, and scenario testing your funding stack against rate moves.
The payoff is agility. A treasurer with live visibility can sweep idle balances, delay a drawdown, or move a deposit the same day. A treasurer working from last week’s spreadsheet is simply guessing with better software.
• Historically, GCC companies operated in a highly liquid environment where securing capital was relatively straightforward. What has been the primary catalyst forcing local businesses to pivot from capital access to capital efficiency?
There was no single event, and I think anyone who claims otherwise is simplifying. Four things arrived together.
Rates reset and stayed reset. The Central Bank of the UAE base rate sits at 3.65%, and while the easing cycle has begun, nobody in this market is pricing a return to near zero money. Capital has a real cost again.
Bank liquidity tightened. The GCC loan to deposit ratio has hit a record high of around 85%, with total system credit at $2.17 trillion and growing over 9% year on year. Banks are still lending, and lending well, but they are selecting harder.
Corporate tax changed the arithmetic. The 9% regime, and specifically the cap on net interest deductions at 30% of EBITDA with a twelve million dirham floor, means debt no longer shelters income the way management teams had assumed. That was a genuine shock to a lot of capital structures.
And discipline cascaded from the top. When the region’s largest allocator trims capital spending and reprioritises toward near term commercial returns, that signal travels down every supply chain.
Put plainly, cheap and abundant bank debt had been covering up ordinary capital discipline for a decade. When the cover came off, the gap between companies that earn their cost of capital and those that merely spend it became impossible to hide.
• With national visions (like Saudi Vision 2030 and UAE We the UAE 2031) driving massive economic transformation, how can GCC companies align their internal funding strategies to support these macro goals without over-leveraging?
We the UAE 2031 sets out to double GDP from 1.49 trillion dirhams to 3 trillion, with 800 billion in non oil exports and foreign trade reaching 4 trillion. Those are enormous, credible demand signals, and the opportunity for the private sector is real.
The discipline I would urge is this. Fund the contracted portion with debt, and fund the ambition with equity.
The mistake I see is companies debt funding capacity built for a target rather than for an order book. If a project’s return depends on a national milestone landing exactly on schedule, that is equity risk by definition, and it should not sit on a bank’s repayment calendar. Stage the capital to milestones instead, so each tranche unlocks against contracted revenue rather than projected demand.
The encouraging development is that equity is genuinely available now in a way it was not a decade ago. Abu Dhabi has stood up a five billion dirham IPO fund specifically to walk private companies through listing, ADX market capitalisation reached 2.8 trillion dirhams by mid year, and the UAE pipeline points to nine to twelve listings. Dubai is actively courting family businesses to list.
For a company chasing Vision aligned growth, the right first question is no longer how much can we borrow. It is what portion of this should be equity, and are we finally ready to take that step.
• When a company shifts its focus to capital efficiency, which internal financial metrics need to take center stage? Are we looking at a stricter focus on ROIC (Return on Invested Capital), or is it more about optimizing working capital cycles?
Both, but they are not the same kind of metric, and confusing them is why transformation programmes stall.
ROIC is the scoreboard. The cash conversion cycle is the lever you actually pull.
If I had to elevate one, it is ROIC, specifically the spread between ROIC and weighted average cost of capital. It is the only number that forces the balance sheet and the income statement into the same conversation. A business can grow revenue, report profit, and still destroy value every year, and ROIC is what exposes that.
Two refinements matter enormously in practice. First, measure it by business unit, not at group level. Group ROIC is an average, and averages hide the divisions quietly consuming capital while a strong core subsidises them. Second, most regional companies have never calculated their true WACC with any rigour. Without it, ROIC is a number without a benchmark.
The working capital cycle is where the improvement gets delivered. Regional days sales outstanding currently sits around 81 days. On a company with 500 million dirhams of revenue, pulling ten days out of DSO releases roughly 14 million dirhams of cash, without a single new funding line, without dilution, and without asking a bank for anything.
Watch ROIC to know whether you are winning. Manage the cash cycle to actually win.
• What are the most common blind spots GCC corporate treasury teams face when trying to unlock trapped cash within their existing operations?
PwC estimates 54.7 billion dollars sits trapped on Middle East listed balance sheets. The more revealing statistic from the same work is that only 9.4% of companies sustained working capital improvement across three consecutive years.
That tells you the real blind spot. Companies treat working capital as a project with an end date, not as a process with an owner. Cash gets released in a push, everyone celebrates, and eighteen months later it has quietly crept back.
The second blind spot is incentives. In most GCC companies, sales commissions are paid on revenue booked, not cash collected. So the commercial team is structurally indifferent to whether the customer ever pays on time, while treasury is held responsible for the consequence. You cannot fix collections with a policy memo while the compensation plan argues the other way.
Third, procurement negotiates on price and ignores terms. Shaving 2% off a unit cost while accepting thirty days shorter payment terms is usually a bad trade, but nobody computes it because the two sit in different budgets.
Fourth, and this one is expensive, cash in subsidiaries and joint ventures across multiple jurisdictions gets reported in group cash while being practically inaccessible. The headline liquidity number looks comfortable. The usable number is materially smaller.
Change what treasury is measured on. Most teams are judged on cost of funds. Judge them on cash released, and the trapped cash finds itself.
Conclusion Or Executive Summary
The GCC corporate landscape is experiencing a structural shift from easy capital access to strict capital efficiency, driven by higher interest rates, new corporate tax regimes, and tightening bank liquidity. While Sukuk has emerged as the dominant debt instrument—commanding a 41% share of GCC debt capital market volumes—companies are increasingly forced to optimize internal metrics, modernize treasury technology, and utilize alternative financing to maintain profitability.
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