There is an organisation in the Emirates that is so exclusive only 30 people have been invited to be part of it.
Its guest list consists of professionals clutching the purse strings of some of the UAE's biggest companies, including Ducab and du.
"It's not a club that you join. It's an event you get invited to," says Amanda Line, the regional director of ICAEW, a professional accountancy body that founded the Chief Financial Officers' (CFO) Club.
"Everyone has been nominated by an advisory board by at least two different people," she adds.
The ICAEW started the club to give CFOs the chance to share their experiences and discuss common issues.
"You have a team working below you of accountants, but CFOs have particular issues [such as] issues that arise on the board," says Ms Line.
The club, which held its first meeting last month, will meet approximately every other month and discuss a different topic each time.
Top of the list for the first meeting's agenda was corporate governance.
"Next time the topic is the changing role of the CFO, because it is changing from a back room accountant to a much more strategic role," says Ms Line.
CFOs are no longer seen as just head bookkeepers.
"Finance isn't a skill that you acquire by osmosis. It is a learnt skill," says Ms Line.
"It is a skill that comes from both academic study and from experience and that's where if you get a good CFO who is well qualified with great experience they can add so much to the business."
Strategy is an area where CFOs are well placed to contribute.
A company cannot move forward without a clear understanding of what the numbers say and how the information can be used to formulate a strategy. But many are worried about the ability of their organisations to implement these.
During the Deloitte survey of CFOs, carried out in the third quarter of last year, almost 70 per cent indicated that their companies' strategies were not well enough defined, and 28 per cent said they had strong concerns.
The role of the CFO generally has become more demanding as a result of increasing pressures from issues such as economic stagnation and growing debt, according to James Babb, a partner and CFO programme leader at Deloitte Middle East.
"The impact of globalisation has never been more prevalent, with even the remotest events affecting a country's national economy in the Middle East," he added.
CFOs, who are second only to chief executives, may be able to help companies navigate those challenges more effectively. But in the Middle East, they tend to be "right down the bottom of the pecking order", according to Ms Line.
"They're just not given the recognition that they should have," she says. Ms Line says one large established family business in the UAE only recently appointed a group CFO.
Until the company created the position, it only had an accountant in each of the subsidiaries.
"There was nobody pulling it all together and from a finance perspective helping to plan the strategy of the business," she says.
Finance is increasingly hard to come by these days - another reason why companies that do not already have one should consider creating a CFO position.
Many family businesses have ambitions to grow, both inside and outside the region. And to do that they need money.
"If you need money, you need a credible finance person to talk to the providers of that capital, the banks and potential investors, but also just to present the business in a way that is going to make it easier to raise that finance," says Ms Line.
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