Business Power of Attorney — run your company by proxy

"Business POA" is three different documents wearing one name

One authority makes this concrete rather than theoretical. Abu Dhabi does not notarise a single business power of attorney: its guidance manual lists three, each with its own service code and its own required documents - a Commercial Licenses POA (ADJD-0003), a Shares POA (ADJD-0004) and a Businesses POA (ADJD-0007).

An authority that built three services rather than one is telling you these are not interchangeable. The three sections below follow that split, because the powers, the paperwork and the risk are genuinely different in each.

Source: Abu Dhabi Judicial Department, Guidance Manual — Notarisation & Attestation Services, July 2023

1. Commercial licence matters

The licence itself: renewals, amendments, activity changes, adding or removing a partner, and dealings with the economic department. Abu Dhabi's Commercial Licenses POA covers "all legal and permissible matters in respect of the trade license(s)".

Dubai is where it gets interesting, and the asymmetry is worth knowing before you assume. Dubai's Department of Economy and Tourism publishes the documents its trade-licence amendment service requires - the trade licence, external approvals for an activity change, a rent contract for a site change, accommodation copies and a no-objection letter for a change of parties - and **a power of attorney is not among them**. For the sale of a shop it asks instead for an "amendment of a contract of sale of a shop certified by the Notary Public": the notarisation lands on the contract, not on a delegation of authority.

We are not going to tell you Dubai refuses a power of attorney here, because the page does not say that. What we can tell you is that Dubai has not published a requirement for one on this service, and Abu Dhabi has built a whole notarised service for the same job. If a representative will be handling your Dubai licence, ask the department what it wants before the document is drafted.

Source: Dubai Department of Economy and Tourism, Request to Amend a Trade License

2. Shares and shareholder representation

The narrowest of the three and the one worth being most careful with, because these powers change who owns the company rather than how it is run. Abu Dhabi's Shares POA covers acting "in every permissible and known matter related to shares", and it is the only one of the three that asks for a specific supporting document: a shares certificate.

Powers that belong in this document, each named rather than assumed:

• Transferring, selling or acquiring shares.
• Signing shareholder resolutions and constitutional amendments.
• Attending and voting at general meetings.
• Receiving dividends or sale proceeds - and note whose account they are received into.
• Pledging shares as security, which is the one most worth a separate decision.

3. Business operations

The day-to-day: contracts, suppliers, staff matters, administrative filings and government transactions. Abu Dhabi's Businesses POA describes it as "following-up his different businesses", which is broad by design and correspondingly worth scoping yourself.

This is the section where a document tends to be written wider than the job. Signing routine supplier agreements and terminating a lease are both "operations"; so is hiring, and so is closing the entity. Decide which of those your representative actually needs.

Two areas sit at the edge of operations and deserve their own thought: **banking**, which the section below covers because the bank rather than the wording decides, and **court proceedings**, which is a different document entirely - our Litigation Power of Attorney page covers what the federal portal publishes about representation before the UAE courts.

Powers that need to be named, and powers that should not be assumed

A document written broadly for convenience tends to include things nobody discussed. These are the ones worth an explicit decision rather than an inherited clause:

• Selling, transferring or pledging shares - this changes who owns the company.
• Borrowing, granting security, or giving guarantees in the company's name.
• Opening or closing bank accounts, and the separate power to operate them.
• Amending the licence, changing the activity, or adding and removing partners.
• Closing or liquidating the entity.
• Signing employment contracts and dealing with end-of-service liabilities.
• Appointing a substitute attorney, which passes your choice of representative to someone else.

Who is involved

The principal is the company, acting through whoever is authorised to bind it - which is itself a question your constitutional documents answer, not this page. The attorney is the person named. A notary witnesses the signature. The receiving party is whichever department, bank or counterparty is handed the document.

Corporate documents usually travel with it. Abu Dhabi's guidance manual is explicit that where a party "is a legal person, the application must be submitted by a person acting on their behalf legally or lawfully, with a proof evidencing so" - which in practice means the trade licence and the constitutional documents come too. RTA asks for something comparable on its corporate export service: a trade licence, a company letter, and a "Memorandum of Association translated into Arabic (legalised translation)".

Source: Abu Dhabi Judicial Department, Guidance Manual — Notarisation & Attestation Services, July 2023; RTA, Export Certificate

Banking powers are a special case

A power of attorney can contain banking powers. That is not the same as a bank accepting it. Banks in the UAE apply their own onboarding, verification and mandate rules, and several require their own forms signed at a branch regardless of what your notarised document says.

So the honest position is this: we can draft banking powers into the document, and you should still ask your bank what it needs before you rely on them. We do not publish a list of what any particular bank requires, because banks do not publish one we can quote and inventing it would be worse than saying nothing.