What is
a Prescribed Company?
A Prescribed Company is the DIFC's special purpose vehicle: a low-cost, passive holding company available to applicants with a qualifying connection to the DIFC — including structures under DIFC foundations and family offices — or for defined qualifying purposes such as structured financing, aviation and crowdfunding structures. It delivers DIFC law and courts at SPV pricing.
What are prescribed companies used for?
Holding assets beneath a DIFC foundation; SPVs inside family-office structures; structured and asset finance; and ring-fencing single assets where the family or fund already lives in the DIFC ecosystem. The 2022 and later reforms widened access substantially, making it the DIFC's answer to the ADGM SPV.
Prescribed company vs ADGM SPV
Functionally similar passive holdcos. The choice usually follows the ecosystem: structures anchored by a DIFC foundation or DIFC family office stay in the DIFC; venture cap-tables and standalone holdings often default to the ADGM SPV. Cost, courts and where the rest of the structure sits decide it.
Who qualifies to establish a prescribed company?
Broadly: applicants with a qualifying relationship to the DIFC — entities and foundations already in the centre, their subsidiaries and family structures — plus vehicles formed for specified qualifying purposes. The categories have been progressively widened; most family and holding use-cases now fit.
Does a prescribed company need an office in the DIFC?
No physical office is required — a registered address through a corporate service provider suffices, which is central to its low running cost. Substance needs should still be considered where tax outcomes depend on it.
How is a prescribed company taxed?
Like other UAE juridical persons: within Corporate Tax, but passive holding income typically benefits from the participation exemption, and prescribed companies wholly owned by a Family Foundation can share its tax-transparent election. Design the tax personality alongside the structure.
Structuring under a foundation?
Senior counsel only. No associates. Direct engagement with the partner who will run your matter.
Family Office Counsel →