The numbers from your Asian subsidiary stopped making sense. Nobody at head office can go and look.

Almost nobody calls us because they have decided to improve group reporting. They call because one of these happened, and the clock had already started.

• The controller left

  One person held the local books, the tax filings, the bank relationships and the history. In most Asian subsidiaries that person has no documented process and no deputy. The day they resign, the group loses the only access it had, and a replacement takes three to six months to find in a market where qualified finance leadership is scarce.

• The auditor raised something

  A management letter point, an emphasis of matter, or a straight refusal to sign until a balance is explained. Head office reads it months after the year it relates to, and the people who could explain it have gone.

• The close keeps slipping

  First it was one week late, then three, then the quarter closed on estimates. Nobody at group can say whether the entity is behind because the team is stretched or because something underneath is broken, and from a distance those two look identical.

• A letter arrived from the tax authority

  Assessments in this region come with deadlines measured in days, and the documents that answer them, intercompany agreements, proof that services were actually delivered, transfer pricing files, sit in three countries and two languages. The response window closes while the group is still working out who owns the problem.

• The acquisition closed and the books are not what the data room showed

  Diligence saw a clean pack. Post-completion, the ledger underneath it turns out to carry unreconciled balances, undocumented related party charges and provisions nobody can source. The gap between the two is now yours.

• A group system rollout reached the local entity

  The regional ERP went live, the consultants left, and the local statutory outputs no longer come out of it. Those obligations are not optional and not negotiable, so the team quietly rebuilds them by hand and the entity stops reconciling to group.

The common thread is not that these are hard problems. It is that they cannot be solved from head office, and the group has nobody it trusts who can be in the room. Where it is one entity rather than the group, that is what the subsidiary finance review is for.

Not one big failure. Seven small ones that compound quietly and all surface at the same moment, usually during a funding round or a sale.

• The consolidation lives in one person's spreadsheet

  Multi-entity, multi-currency consolidation built by one finance manager in Excel is the most common single point of failure we find in Asian groups. It works until that person leaves, or until somebody asks to see the workings.

• Intercompany never agrees

  Entity A says it is owed, entity B has never booked it, and the difference has been carried as a plug for three years. Every month it grows, and nobody has time to unpick it because the close is already late.

• Local books and group books drift apart

  Thai statutory accounts are prepared for the Revenue Department. Vietnamese books follow VAS because they must. Singapore reports on SFRS. Head office wants IFRS. After two years nobody can bridge them, and the bridge is the first thing an acquirer asks for.

• Foreign exchange is translated, not managed

  Translation differences get posted wherever they balance. Real transactional exposure across baht, dong, Singapore and Hong Kong dollars goes unmeasured, so it is either unhedged or hedged on instinct.

• Nobody owns the statutory calendar across jurisdictions

  Each country has its own deadlines, its own audit rules and its own filing dates. Each local provider tracks their own. No one holds the combined view, so the group learns about a missed obligation from a penalty notice.

• Cash is trapped and invisible

  The group is cash rich in one country and borrowing in another. Dividend restrictions, thin capitalisation, withholding on intercompany interest and capital contribution rules all bear on this, and none of it is modelled.

• Transfer pricing is written afterwards

  Management fees and cost recharges are booked all year and documented in a hurry at year end. Written retrospectively, the documentation reads exactly like it was written retrospectively.

• One auditable consolidation

  Rebuilt out of the spreadsheet into something with a documented method, proper intercompany elimination, a defensible translation approach and workings a third party can follow.

• A common reporting framework

  One chart of accounts, one close date, one revenue recognition basis, one submission package that every entity completes. This is the unglamorous work that everything else depends on.

• Maintained local to group bridges

  A documented monthly reconciliation from each entity's statutory basis to the group basis. Run monthly it is routine. Run once a year under audit pressure it is a crisis.

• Intercompany discipline

  Agreed balances every month, a settlement rhythm, priced and papered service agreements, and a transfer pricing position documented while the evidence still exists.

• One statutory calendar

  Every filing, audit, AGM and licence condition in every jurisdiction, with an owner and a date, held centrally rather than distributed across four providers who each assume someone else is watching.

• A group cash view

  Where the cash is, what it costs to move it, what is genuinely available and what is trapped. Then facilities negotiated on your numbers rather than the bank's assumptions.

• Diligence readiness held continuously

  A buyer or investor reads the structure, the books and the contracts together, often for the first time in the group's history. Keeping those three consistent all year is far cheaper than reconciling them in a data room.

• Seven APAC entities, freight forwarding

  Regional CFO APAC at Manuport Logistics across Singapore, Indonesia, Korea, Japan, Thailand, Hong Kong and the Philippines. Taking ownership of local accounting, audits, statutory filings and external providers, and running the monthly close with balance sheet reconciliations, accruals and intercompany matching, reporting into Antwerp.

• Four entities, proptech

  Group CFO at PropertyScout, rebuilding the close and the consolidated profit and loss, balance sheet and cash flow model for the board. Owned the Singapore FY2025 statutory accounts and AGM, drove the Thai audit, and took on commission accrual and margin reporting across the agent network.

• Fourteen markets, 72 finance staff

  Regional CFO Asia at Scan Global Logistics from 2020 to 2025. M&A, greenfield entry and integration across Bangladesh, Hong Kong, Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos and Sri Lanka, with ERP and TMS rollouts and a shared services implementation behind it.

• A European parent with a Thai subsidiary

  Head of Finance at Tomorrowland Thailand, from incorporation to full operation, acting as the bridge between Thai regulatory requirements and group headquarters in Belgium.

Setting up a subsidiary is the part of regional expansion that looks administrative and is not. The decisions taken in the first month, on structure, capital, chart of accounts and who signs, are the ones that are expensive to unpick three years later.

• Structure before incorporation

  What the entity is for determines what it should be. A trading company, a service company, a representative office and a BOI-promoted company have different tax, ownership and reporting consequences, and the wrong choice is corrected by liquidating and starting again.

• A chart of accounts that maps to the group on day one

  The cheapest moment to align a new entity with your group reporting standard is before it has posted a single transaction. Almost nobody does it then, and the reconciliation debt compounds from the first month.

• Capital, funding and the money getting in

  Charter capital requirements, contribution deadlines, registration of offshore loans, and the practical question of which bank will actually open the account and how long it takes. This is where most timelines slip.

• Finance staffed and supervised from the start

  Recruiting the local finance manager, setting the close calendar, and having someone senior review the first three months of output. A new entity left to find its own habits will keep them.

• The statutory calendar from month one

  Registration triggers obligations immediately, including in jurisdictions where you have not yet traded. Late first filings are a poor way to introduce yourself to a tax authority.

Between them, the partners have run greenfield entries and new market openings across Bangladesh, Hong Kong, Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos, Sri Lanka and Kenya, and set up subsidiary finance functions from nothing in several more. Company formation and licensing in Thailand runs through our sister firms, Plizz and Narai Partners.