Kailash Sadangi Examines What Major Corporate Restructurings Mean for Financial Leadership Across the GCC

Corporate restructuring is among the most demanding tests any financial leader will ever face. It is not a strategic exercise conducted from a comfortable distance. It is a daily negotiation between competing creditor interests, a relentless defence of institutional credibility, and a race against time in which the margin for error is effectively zero. Across the GCC, that test is becoming more common. According to S&P Capital IQ data from March 2025, the GCC ranks fifth globally in non-performing loans, with SAR 215 billion in defaulted loans,  a disproportionate 5.5% of global NPLs despite the region comprising only 2.8% of global banking assets. The restructuring era in the Gulf is not approaching. It has arrived.

A Restructuring That Defined a Generation of Finance Leadership

Few finance professionals in the region have navigated a restructuring at the scale and complexity that Kailash Nath Sadangi has. As Group CFO at Drake and Scull International PJSC, a Dubai-listed engineering and construction group, he provided financial oversight for a consolidated P&L exceeding USD 1.0 billion, while leading group restructuring, digital transformation, cost reduction, and shared services initiatives that included cross-border M&A, asset divestment, debt restructuring, and capital management.

The scale of what DSI faced was staggering. The company had accumulated losses of AED 5.5 billion and debts of AED 4.1 billion that brought it to the brink of bankruptcy, requiring a comprehensive restructuring plan spanning over six years to resolve. The restructuring plan, approved by the Dubai Court of Appeal in November 2023, resulted in a liabilities write-back of AED 3.8 billion and conversion of AED 368 million liabilities into mandatory convertible sukuks. The company raised AED 454 million through a share capital issuance and went on to win contracts worth AED 1 billion. By 2024, DSI had swung from a net loss of AED 366.87 million to a net profit of AED 3.76 billion — one of the most dramatic corporate turnarounds in GCC construction history.

Leading the finance function through the most volatile years of that journey demanded something no qualification alone provides.

What Restructuring Really Tests in a Finance Leader

The conventional view of corporate restructuring focuses on the technical — debt instruments, creditor waterfalls, asset valuations, court processes. What that view consistently underestimates is the human and institutional dimension. Creditors are not spreadsheet entries. They are institutions with their own pressures, their own boards, and their own timelines. Courts require not just financial competence but the kind of organisational credibility that only comes from consistent, transparent governance under pressure.

According to Deloitte, only 1% of finance leaders are not consulted at all concerning strategy decisions, and 57% say they play a leading role in shaping strategy in their organisations. In a restructuring environment, that strategic role is not optional — it is the entire job. The CFO must simultaneously manage the numbers, hold the institutional narrative together, and maintain enough internal authority to execute a transformation plan while the organisation is under maximum external scrutiny.

Beyond traditional stewardship, the role in these environments has expanded to sometimes include the responsibilities of a chief transformation officer — leading organisational change through financial restructuring and managing complex M&A activity, balancing the necessary discipline of cost-cutting with the vision required to fund innovation. Sadangi’s tenure at DSI is a precise illustration of that expanded mandate in practice.

What the GCC Needs to Learn From It

The overwhelming majority — 83% — of restructuring professionals globally expect the volume of restructuring mandates to grow significantly or modestly over the next two years, as distressed companies grapple with geopolitical uncertainty, tightening interest rates, and new regulatory challenges. For the GCC, where family conglomerates, listed entities, and government-linked organisations all carry complex capital structures, that wave will require a calibre of finance leadership the region has historically underinvested in building.

The lesson from major restructurings is not simply that CFOs need technical skills. It is that they need institutional depth,  the ability to command credibility in a courtroom, a creditor meeting, and a board room simultaneously, and to hold the long view when every short-term pressure is pointing toward compromise.

About Kailash Nath Sadangi

Kailash Sadangi is a senior finance and governance professional with over three decades of experience across the GCC, Asia-Pacific, Europe, and Australia. His career spans multinational corporations, including Emerson and Terex, the Dubai-listed Drake and Scull International, and Public Private Partnerships, Al Muhaidib Group, and Al-Othman Holding. He is a DBA Researcher from Warwick Business School, an MBA, holds Chartered Accountancy and CMA qualifications, and is a Certified Director from the GCC Board Directors Institute.

Sources:

1. Cross-Sector Career PR — National Law Review / EIN Presswire https://natlawreview.com/press-releases/what-kailash-sadangis-cross-sector-experience-teaches-us-about-financial
2. Drake & Scull Restructuring Outcome — The Arabian Post https://thearabianpost.com/drake-scull-reports-aed-3-76-billion-profit-amid-restructuring-efforts/
3. Drake & Scull Turnaround — AGBI https://www.agbi.com/construction/2025/03/drake-scull-swings-to-1bn-profit-post-restructuring/
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6. Global Restructuring Mandates — CSC Global https://www.cscglobal.com/service/press/corporate-restructurings-set-to-accelerate/
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10. LinkedIn — Kailash Sadangi https://www.linkedin.com/in/kailash-sadangi-182b043/