Chief Accounting Officer: Who Signs the Numbers at Listing
A Gulf group usually appoints a chief accounting officer a year late. Here is what changes when the accounts must satisfy a regulator, not just an owner.
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A standing brief on the executive search and leadership market across the Gulf.
A chief accounting officer is the person who owns how a group applies the accounting standards, and who stands behind the numbers it publishes. Gulf groups usually appoint one a year later than they should, at the point where a listing, a bond issue or a regulator's question has already made the need obvious. By then the group has to hire the role and answer outsiders' questions at the same time. This piece explains what a chief accounting officer owns, how it differs from the group financial controller, what changes in the finance line when accounts have to satisfy a regulator and not just an owner, and what a board can check this quarter.
Chief accounting officer: the role a group adds after it needed it
The title varies. In the United States the law refers to a principal accounting officer, and a Gulf group might use head of financial reporting, group chief accountant or something else. What matters is the job, and the job has three parts.
The first is accounting policy. A group makes hundreds of choices about how to apply the standards to its own transactions: when revenue is recognised on a long contract, how a lease is treated, whether an investment is consolidated or held at fair value. Each choice should be written down, reasoned and consistent across every entity. The second is disclosure. The notes to the accounts, the management discussion and any statement a regulator reads carry a set of judgements that someone has to be willing to defend. The third is the relationship with the external auditor. The chief accounting officer is the person the auditor goes to when a judgement is in question, and the person who can say yes or no on the group's behalf.
None of this is invisible in a small group. It is simply done by the chief financial officer, or the controller, or both, without a name against it. That is workable while the only readers of the accounts are the owners and a bank. It stops working when the readers change.
An owner will take your word for the numbers. A regulator or a bondholder will want the accounting policy in writing, and the name of the person who owns it.
Where the role comes from: a signature, and a calendar
The clearest statement of the role comes from the United States. The Securities and Exchange Commission's instructions for the annual report on Form 10-K say that the report must be signed on behalf of the company by its principal executive officer, its principal financial officer, and its controller or principal accounting officer, and also by a majority of the board. The point is that the law wants a named individual, below the chief financial officer, whose job is the accounting itself.
No Gulf rule that JOH has reviewed uses that wording. The pressure comes instead from the calendar and from the standards. According to a published summary of the listing rules by Baker McKenzie, a company on the main market of the Saudi Exchange has to publish quarterly statements within 30 days of the end of the period and annual statements within 90 days of the end of the year, with board approval before publication. Interim statements need not be audited but must be reviewed by the auditor. A group that closes its books in six weeks and then reviews its judgements in a hurry has a problem with those dates.
The standards are the other pressure. The IFRS Foundation's jurisdiction profile for Saudi Arabia says IFRS Accounting Standards are required for publicly accountable entities, and the profile for the UAE says they are required for companies listed on the Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange and NASDAQ Dubai. Applying a global set of standards to a Gulf family group takes technical judgement, and judgement needs an owner.
The boundary with the group financial controller
The two jobs are close, and boards confuse them, so the line needs stating plainly. The group financial controller runs the process. Each entity's records are turned into one set of consolidated accounts, the books are closed on time, and the result is ready for an auditor. The chief accounting officer decides what the standards require. Is this contract one performance obligation or three? Does the group control this partly owned company? How should this related-party loan be disclosed? The controller produces the numbers. The chief accounting officer is accountable for what they mean.
In a group of modest size one person does both, and does it well. The strain appears when the group is large enough that the person closing the books has no time left to think about policy, or when a transaction arrives that the standards do not obviously cover. At that point the two jobs have to be separated, and the controller's perspective is the companion to this one for that reason.
What changes when a regulator reads the accounts
An owner reads accounts to understand a business they already know. A regulator, a bondholder or a public investor reads them to understand a business they have never seen, and they read what is not said as closely as what is.
Three things tend to change in the finance line. The first is related-party disclosure, which matters most of all in a family group. IAS 24 requires companies to disclose transactions with related parties, and in a family group the number of related parties, and the informality of the dealings with them, can be large. Loans from the family, property leased from a family company and services supplied by a relative's business are all in scope. Each one needs to be identified, priced and written down.
The second is consistency. Policies that were applied slightly differently by each entity, because each entity had its own finance head, have to be brought into line, with a written explanation of every change. The third is the audit trail. Every judgement in the accounts needs a paper behind it that an auditor and a regulator can read, and that does not depend on the memory of one person.
The same logic is now visible in the UK. Provision 29 of the UK Corporate Governance Code 2024, which applies to financial years beginning on or after 1 January 2026, asks boards to declare whether their material controls were effective, including controls over reporting. It is not a Gulf requirement. It is a useful question for a Gulf board to put to itself, and JOH's research on group finance leadership in the Gulf explores who owns each material control in the finance line.
A composite: the policy manual that lived in one head
The details are changed and combined from several situations. This is not any one client's story.
A family-owned industrial group with nine operating companies decides to issue its first public bond. The group has a capable finance team of about fourteen people. The controller closes the books each quarter, the treasurer has a good relationship with the banks, and the audit has been clean for years.
The investment bank asks for a written accounting policy manual. The group has one, of a kind. It is a collection of notes, some held by the controller, some by an adviser the family trusts, and some in the auditor's working papers. Three of the nine companies recognise revenue on a long contract in slightly different ways, and nobody has ever been asked to say which is right. A loan from the founder to one subsidiary has been carried at no interest for six years and has never appeared in a related-party note.
The bond is delayed by four months while the group appoints a senior technical accountant, writes the manual, restates one year's comparatives and agrees the treatment of the founder's loan with the auditor. The family concludes that nothing was wrong with the numbers. What was missing was the person whose job it was to say how the numbers were reached.
Closing the books is one skill. Deciding how the standards apply to this particular group is another. Somebody has to own it by name.
When to appoint, and what to look for
The best time is twelve to eighteen months before the event that puts the accounts in front of outsiders. That gives the person time to learn the group, write the policy manual, bring the entities into line and be tested by one cycle of year-end before a regulator is involved.
The profile is specific. A strong candidate has usually spent time in a large audit firm, so that they know how an auditor challenges a judgement, and then in a listed or heavily regulated company, so that they know what a regulator asks. They have the technical depth to hold a position against a persuasive chief financial officer, and the temperament to do it without making it personal. JOH has placed senior finance and control leaders into groups of exactly this type, as in its engagement building three group functional leaders into a Tadawul-listed Saudi industrial holding, where the brief was to find people who could stand alongside a chief executive running a transformation across eight operating companies.
The reporting line matters as much as the person. Day to day the role reports to the chief financial officer. It also needs a clear line to the audit committee chair, so that a disagreement about a judgement can be heard without anyone having to resign. JOH's perspective on the chief audit executive makes the same argument for the audit function, and the principle is the same. Santi Rasanayagam's conversation on moving from chief financial officer to chief executive is a useful companion for a board thinking about how finance leadership develops, and JOH's perspective on the group treasurer covers the third job in the line, the one that holds the cash.
What a board can check this quarter
A board does not need to hire anyone to find out where it stands. It can ask four questions of its chief financial officer and its audit committee chair.
Who owns the group's accounting policies, by name? Is there a written manual, and when was it last reviewed against what each entity actually does? Has the external auditor met the audit committee without management present in the last twelve months, and what did the auditor say? And if the group had to publish accounts to a regulator's standard next year, who would sign the judgements?
If the first answer is the chief financial officer's name and the others are vague, the board has found the gap while it is still cheap to close. JOH's research on the control layer beneath the Gulf chief executive covers the functions that check the numbers, and a board that wants a continuing view of how its control and finance appointments are performing, instead of a one-off review, can use platforms such as Board Pulse to follow that between audit cycles. The sector background for groups with many entities is set out on the group holdings sector page.
The one conversation that decides it
A chief accounting officer who is doing the job well produces very little drama. The policy manual is read by few people, the auditor has no surprises, and the accounts are published on time. The role earns its place in the one conversation where it matters, with an investor, a lender or a regulator who asks how a number was reached and gets a prompt, written answer from the person who made the call.
Key takeaways
JOH Partners is an executive search and senior executive recruitment firm advising boards, family groups and sovereign-adjacent platforms on chief accounting officer, group financial controller and wider finance-line appointments across the GCC, the UK and Singapore. A board that wants a continuing view of its senior finance and control appointments can request a Board Pulse demo, or engage a partner for a confidential conversation about who owns the group's accounting judgements today.
Questions about this topic.
What does a chief accounting officer do?
A chief accounting officer owns the group's accounting policies and the judgements behind them, and stands behind the fairness of the numbers the group publishes. In the United States the law names a principal accounting officer or controller as one of the officers who must sign the annual report. Elsewhere, including in the Gulf, the title varies, but the job is the same: to decide how the accounting standards apply to this group, and to sign what the group says.
How is a chief accounting officer different from a group financial controller?
The group financial controller runs the process that turns each entity's records into consolidated accounts, closes the books on time and keeps them ready for an auditor. The chief accounting officer decides how the accounting standards apply to the group's own transactions, owns the policy manual, and is accountable for the disclosures. In a smaller group one person does both. As a group lists or issues debt, the two jobs usually need to be separated.
When should a Gulf group appoint a chief accounting officer?
Before a listing, a bond issue or a major disposal puts the accounts in front of outsiders, and ideally twelve to eighteen months before. Appointing after the process has started means the person has to learn the group while answering an auditor's and a regulator's questions at the same time.
What reporting deadlines do listed Gulf groups face?
On the main market of the Saudi Exchange, according to a published summary of the listing rules, annual financial statements are due within 90 days of the financial year end and quarterly statements within 30 days of the period end, with board approval before publication. Interim statements need not be audited but must be reviewed by the auditor. A group that closes slowly or inconsistently finds those deadlines very visible.
Who should the chief accounting officer report to?
Day to day, to the chief financial officer. The role also needs a clear line to the audit committee chair, so that a disagreement with management about an accounting judgement can be heard without anyone having to resign. Boards that give the role a direct line, and test it by asking the audit committee chair to meet the person without management present, get a more reliable signal.
Oliver Helvin
Founder and Managing Director
Oliver Helvin is the Founder and Managing Director of JOH Partners. He writes on the GCC executive market, leadership transitions in family-controlled businesses, and the discipline of senior search.
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