Infinity Group: Offshore Services Provider

09/02/2022

More information on how to legalize company's corporate documents in or book Offshore Company Fundamentals: How to Legally Set Up a Company and Open a Bank Account

07/02/2022

How much will it cost to create an offshore company?

The cost of an offshore company will depend on the chosen jurisdiction, the corporate structure (with or without nominee services) and other factors. For instance, you may have to order additional documents aside from the standard set, you may be required to have the documents legalised or translated into other languages, etc.

Any professional intermediary that incorporates and sells offshore companies will give you their price list.

As a general guideline, we can say that offshore prices vary from about one and a half to ten thousand US dollars. The classic island offshore (Seychelles, Belize, British Virgin Islands) can be purchased ‘cheap’, i.e. for less than US$2,000. Hong Kong, Cayman Islands or the Isle of Man companies will cost about twice as much. Singapore and Malta will require a budget of at least US$8,500.

04/02/2022

How to incorporate an offshore company?

To register a new offshore company, you must first decide on its corporate structure (who the directors and shareholders will be, what authorised capital the company will have) and choose its name. You need to remember though that the name you have picked, either with difficulty or intuitively, may already be taken. So in order to increase the chance of passing the company name check, it is better to come up with several names that will be checked for availability with the registration authority of the offshore jurisdiction.

After receiving confirmation that the name can be used, the registered agent will file an application for registration (incorporation) of the company. Usually, the application is accompanied by the company’s memorandum and articles of association (or their equivalents that can be called differently depending on the offshore jurisdiction and the type of the legal entity).

Once the registered agent receives a certificate of incorporation and constitutive documents stamped by the Registrar of Companies (Companies House, Trade Register, Chamber of Commerce, etc.), the agent appoints the first director of the company and prepares a properly legalised package of corporate documents that can then be used outside the offshore jurisdiction.

At the same time, the company’s shareholding documents are made and signed, as well as other documents required for opening bank accounts and conducting business (power of attorney, trust documents, etc.). In accordance with corporate law of an offshore jurisdiction, a company seal is also made to be used outside the country of incorporation.

If you do not grasp the above procedure right away, do not worry: in most cases you will not discern the individual stages of the company set-up process and will only need to be directly involved at the stage of discussing the company name and structure and collecting the precious briefcase with documents.

02/02/2022

31/01/2022

There is nothing like getting to know people in person

Would it make your day if your foreign partner whose supplies make your core business invited you to a dinner party? Do you try to get hold of a potentially useful guest at a presentation reception? Do you try to get acquainted with a popular journalist? You will probably answer ‘yes’ to most of these questions.

The same logic should be used when establishing business relations with attorneys-at-law, professional directors, bankers, and auditors, who will provide services, prepare financial statements, and operate the bank accounts of your foreign companies. Their competence, responsiveness and overall professionalism will determine the success of your business. And if you do not establish business contacts with them from the very start, you expose your business to a certain level of risk, just as if you were to disregard the technical condition of your car.

21/01/2022

Do I have to travel to the offshore zone to incorporate a company?

The governments of all offshore jurisdictions understand that the mandatory presence of the founder of a legal entity will reduce the number of incorporations by thousands, if not tens of thousands. Therefore, the laws of most offshore countries do not require a director or shareholder to be present in order to set up a company, as its constitutive documents are signed by so-called subscribers.

Subscribers are normally employees of a registered agent (a local firm licensed to form and administer companies). They apply to the relevant authority for incorporation of a company and appoint the initial director.

So, you do not have to fly over to the offshore zone, you simply have to make a request to a firm that offers these kinds of services in your home country and cooperates with registered agents worldwide.

However, this does not at all mean you cannot on occasion mix business with pleasure and visit the country where you plan to register (or have already registered) a company in order to understand the mentality and practices of government bodies and local agents. Nor will it go amiss to meet the people responsible for your company’s correct and efficient document flow. We dare say after you feel the rhythm of life and work in offshore countries and establish direct business relations with local staff, you will find dealing with offshore companies easier, or at least much more predictable.

17/01/2022

Are there any business restrictions for offshore companies?

Citizens of most countries are normally not prohibited by national law from having shares in overseas companies

The laws of offshore jurisdictions, in turn, do not have any restrictions on nationality or tax residence of directors or shareholders. But an offshore company must comply with the laws of the country where it effectively conducts business.

For example, under a number of EU Directives, doing business in any EU country via an offshore company may be qualified as doing business via permanent establishment with all the ensuing consequences and procedures. If certain types of business need to be licensed or obtain a special permit, then the offshore company will, of course, have to apply for this.

12/01/2022

How long does it take to incorporate an offshore company?

As usual it takes a couple of days, but sometimes "storms" happen. ..

10/01/2022

How to choose the most suitable offshore jurisdiction for your company?

When choosing a jurisdiction for an offshore company, first, it is better to determine what you need the company for. Do you need a company for regular export-import operations? For holding an asset? For dividends and royalties? Answers to all these questions will help your consultant choose the most suitable option.

The second key point is whether your priority is higher confidentiality of company owners’ information or image of the jurisdiction?

In most cases, one of the two will have to be sacrificed. Do not forget that the better reputation and the more professional local agents a jurisdiction has, the higher the cost of registration and annual upkeep of your corporation will be.

After you have decided about the purpose of the company and the budget for its administration, it is time to analyse the tax and corporate laws of the country of incorporation, and whether it has a double tax treaty (and a tax information exchange agreement) with your home state. You may also need to consider the nature of the proposed business in terms of licensing (for example, financial intermediaries must be licensed in almost all offshore jurisdictions, no matter where the company’s customers are located).

Other factors should be considered, too. Does the bank where you plan to open an account or your proposed business partner have any special requirements for the jurisdiction of the company? Is the jurisdiction of your choice party to the Hague Convention on Apostille (if not, the costs of legalising the corporate documents can increase several times)? Depending on the case, there may be other ‘surprises’ that affect the choice of jurisdiction.

29/12/2021

The most common examples of the use of offshore companies in business

It is difficult to give the most common examples, although offshore territories are estimated to account for up to 30% of the world’s financial turnover. Take the world’s major financial institutions for example: banks, funds, investment and insurance companies – all have branches in at least one offshore zone, such as Switzerland, Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, Guernsey and Jersey of the Channel Islands, the Netherlands Antilles, the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, Hong Kong and Singapore. This is not surprising as these countries levy little or no tax on securities transactions.
Another popular way for a large business to ‘go offshore’ is to form a holding, i.e. to create an ownership structure which puts the offshore in the main (usually the top) position. If you look at the publicly available information on the ownership structure of a large production or trading holding, you will almost always see companies registered in Cyprus, Gibraltar or the British Virgin Islands at the top. In order to get a personal feel of ‘the presence of offshore in our lives’ you would simply need to take a closer look at the goods and products you buy. It is then that you will see the paper produced in the Isle of Man (where nothing but juniper has ever grown), strawberries from the British Virgin Islands (which makes you wonder how they have not gone bad after being transported through several time zones) and sunflower oil from the State of Delaware.
A real ‘Offshore Tale’ was the publication of leaks from the so-called Panama Papers (we will make a separate post about it). The impression a man in the street may get from it is that one in five officials, politicians or celebrities was connected with the offshore world in one way or another. And when it comes to business circles, it is simply impossible to find a tycoon who has not been busted using offshore structures.

However, even the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), which published the leaked material, admits on its website that ‘there are legitimate uses for offshore companies’ and that being included in the ICIJ Offshore Leaks Database is not an indication that an individual, company or other entity ‘has broken the law or otherwise acted improperly’.