Muaaz Saddal

Financial Close & Bookkeeping
• Execute full-cycle monthly bookkeeping closes — journal entries, accruals, reconciliations, and ledger maintenance — across
management fee, structuring fee, and subscription fee revenue streams.
• Conducted a holistic remediation of historical accounting records spanning the full post-FY2024 audit period, identifying and
correcting accumulated errors and inconsistencies across approximately 11 months of locked entries in preparation for the 2025
statutory audit.
Reporting & Financial Planning
• Prepare monthly internal management reports for senior stakeholders, delivering actionable insights on fund performance, fee
income, and operational expenditure.
• Built a 3-month financial landing model for Q4 of the financial year, projecting the full-year position by systematically
incorporating recurring obligations, one-off expenses, expected income, and documented assumptions.
Fund Reporting & Valuations
• Built a closed-ended PE funds inaugural IFRS financial statements (primary statements and notes) for its stub period, using a
sister Merak funds statementas the structural template and applying IFRS 10 investment-entity and FVTPL treatment.
• Compiled IFRS 13 Level 3 fair-value measurements into the significant-unobservable-input disclosures (revenue multiples,
expected volatility, risk-free rate) required for fund financial statements, and performed quality-control reviews of fund financial
statements ahead of Big 4 circulation.
• Prepared investment confirmations for auditors and, in doing so, reviewed third-party (Kroll) portfolio valuation reports —
agreeing concluded fair values, share counts, and ownership stakes to the funds investment records.
Regulatory & Tax Compliance
• Prepare and submit the monthly CAM report to the Capital Market Authority (CMA), drawing on the firms trial balance and
supporting management workings.
• Oversee quarterly VAT returns and monthly Withholding Tax (WHT) filings to ZATCA — coordinating data provision to tax
consultants, reviewing challans, and ensuring timely submission and payment.
Audit Management
• Owned the 2025 statutory audit end-to-end from the client side, navigating a change in statutory auditor (KPMG to PKF) without
disruption to the audit timeline. Prepared the consolidated financial statements, reviewed auditor drafts, proposed adjustments,
and locked the final numbers for board approval and CMA submission.
Systems & Process Improvement
• Conducted month-on-month reconciliation between the new ERP systems output and parallel Qoyod bookkeeping records
during the migration period, identifying and flagging discrepancies for correction.
• Provided technical input on the design of the chart of accounts for the companys new ERP implementation.

• Conducted independent quality reviews of 40+ small and medium audit firms, evaluating compliance with IFRS, ISA, and ISQM
through risk-based assessments— authoring a full review report on each engagement, recommending pass/fail outcomes with
mandated follow-up reviews for failing firms, and presenting findings to the Members Affairs Committee (MAC) at monthly
intervals over the 17-month tenure.
• Identified recurring IFRS technical deficiencies in reviewed financial statements — including arbitrary or undocumented revenue
recognition policies (and incongruence with stated accounting policy where defined), omission and incorrect measurement of
expected credit losses on financial assets (notably interest-free intercompany loans), and inaccurate lease and deferred tax
computations.
• Surfaced systemic auditing and firm-level quality weaknesses — insufficient documentation of risk assessment, weak sampling
rationale, and inadequate procedures over significant accounts, alongside ISQM-level gaps in independence monitoring,
engagement quality review (EQR) coverage, and root-cause analysis processes.

• Led and executed statutory and group audits across manufacturing, construction, healthcare, and not-for-profit sectors including
UAE-based international clients, managing concurrent engagements from risk assessment and audit program design through to
timely delivery of milestones.
• Applied IFRS and ISA in complex scenarios, evaluated internal controls, identified key risks, and delivered actionable
recommendations — liaising with client management and specialist advisors (tax, IT, actuaries) while supervising and mentoring
teams of 5-10 members in full compliance with EY ethics and independence standards.
• Engagement highlights: Delivered the consolidated group audit of a publicly listed Abu Dhabi healthcare holding company with
operations spanning the GCC, multiple functional currencies, and coordination across both EY component teams and external
component auditors — operating as offshore engagement team reporting directly to the audit director. Concurrently led the
consolidated group audit of one of Pakistans largest vertically integrated textile groups and one of the countrys largest
education groups (multi-stream revenue across owned schools, colleges, university, franchise fees, and brand royalty).
• Technical resolutions on these engagements: Concluded IFRS 15 principal-vs-agent assessment on a regulated medical
testing revenue stream operated under government administration (gross presentation supported); resolved IAS 2 measurement
treatment for inventory consumed as a service input; reviewed complex closing inventory and WIP valuations for chemical and
industrial-glass manufacturers; and audited an IFRS 16 lease portfolio of several hundred vehicles, including the short-term
lease designation applied to motorcycle fleets.
• Leadership: Led a team of five end-to-end on the textile group audit— coordinating across client management, the engagement
actuary (end-of-service obligations), internal EY tax specialists, and IT audit (controls environment testing) — through full audit
lifecycle from planning to sign-off.
Portfolio sectors spanned textile manufacturing, industrial glass, chemicals, FMCG, construction, healthcare/hospitals,
education, not-for-profit, and UAE-based delivery services.