Beyond the vehicle: Why global families and businesses are structuring for trust
Salmaan Jaffery, Chief Business Development Officer at DIFC Authority explains that as management of assets becomes borderless, the deciding factor in where they are held is not just cost and convenience, but confidence.
Salmaan Jaffery
Published: 05/08/2026
5 min read
In today’s increasingly globalised world, the assets of families and businesses no longer sit neatly in one place. A founder may live in one country, run a business in a second and hold investments across a third, while families increasingly span continents and move their capital with them. In this environment, the practical question facing internationally minded investors is not simply where their assets are held, but whether those assets can be managed, protected and passed on with certainty across several legal systems at once.
Structures are how that certainty is created, and they have long been the quiet machinery behind serious wealth. Holding companies, Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) and similar arrangements are far more than administrative conveniences. They are the architecture through which ownership is clarified, liabilities are ring-fenced, financing is executed and succession is planned.
For decades, sophisticated companies and some families have relied on them to preserve wealth across generations. Today the same logic is being applied much more widely, by investment firms, a broader range of institutions and internationally mobile individuals who need their affairs to hold up to international standards.
It is against this backdrop that DIFC has updated its Prescribed Company (PC) Regulations, the Centre’s equivalent of the SPV, in a change that is deliberately broad in its reach. The reforms open the structure to individuals and businesses across the world, making the PC a far more accessible holding vehicle than it has ever been. This update now removes previous qualifying requirements so that non-exempt applicants can now establish or continue a Prescribed Company, provided they appoint a DIFC-licensed Corporate Services Provider as the primary administrative and compliance interface with the Registrar of Companies. DIFC authorised firms, registered persons, government entities and publicly listed entities can apply directly and are exempt from using a Corporate Services Provider. In practice, this widens the door to a broad range of users who are able to draw on advantages suited to the way they hold and organise their interests.
The vehicle itself remains passive by design, in that it holds and structures rather than trades or employs staff, and where it connects to Financial Services it must do so in line with DFSA-administered legislation.
Designed to be versatile, spanning family groups, investment holding structures, financing transactions and other ownership arrangements, the regime increasingly defines modern cross-border management of assets.
What is notable is not only that access has widened, but how it has done so. By writing the Corporate Services Provider into the regime as a formal, statutory role responsible for filings, record-keeping and ongoing compliance, DIFC has broadened the door while keeping governance built into the design rather than bolted on afterwards. Because applicants now work through a CSP, each structure is guided from the outset by professionals whose expertise keeps it compliant, and it is this community of experts, operating in their own right, that will carry the regime as the industry puts it to work. That distinction matters a great deal, because in a world where more people than ever can structure their assets across borders, the differentiator is no longer whether a vehicle exists, given that almost every jurisdiction offers one.
The real differentiator is trust, meaning the confidence that a structure will be recognised, that the framework behind it is sound, and that ecosystem is genuinely stable.
Here, location becomes a matter of substance rather than marketing. Dubai is consistently ranked among the safest cities in the world, an often underappreciated enabler for anyone making long-term decisions about capital and family. It has also climbed to seventh globally in the Global Financial Centres Index, its highest position to date, placing it among the established global financial centres.
The depth of the surrounding ecosystem tells the same story. In the first half of 2026, DIFC reached 10,018 active registered companies and 1,134 regulated financial services firms, while family-related entities rose 36 per cent and foundations climbed 67 per cent. A structure is only ever as strong as the banks, asset managers, advisers and courts that stand around it, and a deepening concentration of serious institutions is what turns a vehicle into a viable base of operations.
Differentiating itself from the long-standing European jurisdictions, well-known offshore islands or other financial centres, which tend to optimise for one dimension at a time, DIFC combines a recognised common-law framework, proximity to the growth markets of the Middle East Africa and South Asia, and a full, transparently governed ecosystem.
For global citizens and companies, the calculation is quietly shifting. The choice is moving towards where it is most credible, most usable and cost effectively. And that place is Dubai’s DIFC.