BDO Chartered Accountants & Advisors

Our history in the UAE Russi J Patel started his accounting practice during the 1950’s and in 1962 moved to Aden, in South Yemen. Very quickly, Russi established his name within the business community in Aden. It was with that strong name with many leading business people expanding into Dubai, Russi founded the current firm in the United Arab Emirates in 1967. The firm became the representative firm of BDO in the United Arab Emirates in 1975 and was known as BDO Patel & Co. In 1999, after a merger with another firm operating in Dubai, the firm became BDO Patel & Al Saleh. From December 15, 2009, BDO Patel & Al Saleh is now known as ‘BDO’. This forms part of a global initiative that will result in all BDO Member Firms in 100 countries worldwide adopting the single trading name of ‘BDO’ by 1 January 2010. The history of the BDO International network BDO’s distinctive reputation for client proximity is built upon our commitment to all our stakeholders that what matters to them matters to us. Our clients recognise us as their preferred adviser, appreciating our seamless service world wide. Our story is one of continuously responding to ever changing client needs. We were founded in 1963 when firms from the UK, Netherlands, Germany, US and Canada joined forces to share and expand their knowledge to better support clients. We were known as Binder Seidman International Group until 1973, when we adopted the name Binder Dijker Otte & Co: BDO. We continued to build our international capabilities, growing the strong local roots that mean we now provide services to our clients in 100 countries. In 1988, we established a world wide structure and the BDO acronym was placed before each local member firm’s name. This, together with the introduction of a new logo and a consistent global brand, clearly demonstrated that the local expertise of our member firms was combined with the international expertise and strength of our international network. Since then, our network has continued to transform in response to client needs, culminating in the change of our name in 2009 to simply BDO. Our move to a single global trading name demonstrates our commitment to service our clients and to compete successfully in our market on a multinational basis. We have excellent partner to staff ratio, with 88,120 people working with our clients and offering challenging, ethical and practical advice from 1,617 offices in 167 countries. Our commitment to knowledge and best practice sharing means that expertise is easily shared across the network. Our common methodologies and IT platform ensure effective and efficient service delivery to all our clients. To maintain standards we have a robust accreditation process and quality assurance review procedure. We remain focused on helping our clients navigate ever-changing economic and market conditions by providing high quality advice and service to all our clients on a consistent basis. This will enable us to achieve our ambition to significantly increase our market share and ensure that we are recognised in the market as a unified global network.