Who This is for
The licence permits what you sell but not who you sell it to, and selling through a distributor has stopped making sense.
Starting a new company would mean starting the trading history and the bank relationship again with it.
The activity list, the visa allocation, the office requirement or the banking reception has turned out to be the constraint.
Continuing the entity keeps its contracts, its registrations and its age; incorporating fresh discards them.
Several entities across jurisdictions, brought into one place in the right order, without breaking the operating company mid-sequence.
What’s Included
How it Works — in Order
The order below is the order we have actually run these in. Each stage depends on the one before it, and the departing registry will not release the company until its own file is complete.
Confirm the move is possible before anything is filed
Not every jurisdiction permits a company to leave, and not every jurisdiction accepts one arriving. The activity must also exist in the receiving jurisdiction’s schedule. Where continuation is not available, we say so and price the alternative instead.
Shareholders’ resolution
A formal resolution approving the transfer, in the departing registry’s required form, executed and attested as it requires. Everything downstream references this document.
Auditor’s solvency letter and financial position
The departing registry needs to be satisfied the company is not leaving its debts behind. A company whose books are not current cannot produce this quickly — this is where most timetables slip.
Settle everything owed in the departing jurisdiction
Registry fees, licence renewals, office charges, fines. Clearance is not issued over an open balance.
Cancel every visa the entity sponsors, then the establishment card
The company cannot exit while it still sponsors residents. Each person affected needs their own plan — and that planning belongs in stage one, not stage five.
Exit clearance issued
With the resolution, the solvency letter, a clean balance and no live sponsorships, the departing registry issues its clearance. There is a window in which the company must arrive somewhere.
Application to the receiving authority
Name and activity confirmation, audited financials, a feasibility study where required, the exit clearance, and re-drafted constitutional documents. Where the destination is the mainland, a lease and external approvals attach.
Licence issued in the new jurisdiction
The entity is now licensed on the other side, with its original incorporation date intact.
Certificate of Continuation returned to the departing registry
The step people forget, because the new licence is already in hand. Until the certificate is filed back, the departing registry’s file remains open — and an open file continues to attract obligations.
Rebuild what was cancelled
New establishment card, visas re-issued, bank mandate updated against the new licence and documents, corporate tax and VAT registrations amended, UBO register refiled.
What We Need from You
Most of this is a scan and an email — none of it needs to be perfect before we talk. Two items set the timetable: the state of the books (the solvency letter waits on them) and the visa position (every sponsored person needs a plan before the exit starts). Raise both honestly at the outset and the rest is sequencing.
Timeline and Cost
We do not quote a duration in the abstract: the timetable is set by two registries in sequence, and by how current your accounts and visa position are on the day we start. Where the time actually goes is the solvency and audit position, and the visa cancellations. The registry steps are rarely the delay.
Penalties in this area accrue monthly — for documents filed late and for cancellations not completed on time — and they run while the file waits on a bookkeeping catch-up or an absent shareholder’s signature. A transfer that stalls for a quarter is not merely delayed; it is more expensive every month it stalls.
Our fee is fixed and agreed in writing against a defined scope — the number of visas to cancel, the state of the accounts, the documents to be drafted and attested — and never to the value of the business.
Company Transfer CalculatorWhere it Goes Wrong
An owner incorporates in the destination, assuming the old entity can be folded into it. It cannot — that is a business transfer, not a continuation, and the contracts, licences and history stay with the entity now being closed.
The letter is a gate, not a formality. If two years of bookkeeping must be reconstructed first, the transfer stops there while the monthly penalty clock runs.
Cancellation of all sponsored visas and the establishment card sits on the critical path and cannot be compressed. The person most often caught out is the owner, whose own residence is sponsored by the company being moved.
The new licence arrives, the team moves on, and nobody closes the departing registry’s file. It stays open, stays billable, and surfaces later — typically when the same shareholders try to incorporate again.
The account was opened against the old licence and documents. When those are replaced, signatory authority is in question and the bank may re-run onboarding. Payroll and supplier payments are the first casualties.
A licence category that reads similarly is not the same category. This must be settled at feasibility — after exit clearance is issued, the company has nowhere to land.
Questions
Does re-domiciliation keep the company’s original incorporation date?
Yes — that is the point of it. The entity continues rather than being replaced, so its age, its contracts and its liabilities carry across. That continuity is what a new incorporation cannot give you.
Can I move from a free zone to the mainland?
Yes, subject to both the free zone permitting exit and the mainland authority accepting the activity. It is the most common transfer we handle, and the sequence above is drawn from it.
Can I move a company from outside the UAE into the UAE?
In principle yes, where the home jurisdiction permits continuation out and the receiving UAE registry permits continuation in. The first question is always what the home jurisdiction allows.
Do my employees lose their visas?
Their visas are cancelled as part of the exit and re-issued under the new licence. Whether there is a gap depends on planning — which is why the visa position is mapped at stage one rather than discovered at stage five.
Will my bank account survive?
The account belongs to the same legal entity, so it is not automatically closed. But the licence, the documents and often the signatories change, and banks treat that as material. Assume the mandate must be re-documented.
Is it cheaper to just open a new company?
Sometimes, on the incorporation invoice alone. Rarely once you count re-registering with customers, re-tendering, losing the trading history, and closing the old entity properly — while late-document and late-cancellation penalties keep accruing monthly.
Can you take over a transfer someone else started badly?
Yes. The first work is establishing the real position at both registries — what was filed, what is owed, what was cancelled — which is frequently not what the client has been told.