Why Buy a Vintage Swiss Trust Company?
December 14th, 2009 Filed under: ab trust,Executor Fees,sample wills,Trusts attorney — Estate Planning Author
Switzerland has a well-deserved reputation as the country of choice for discerning customers looking to conduct their business in secrecy while still enjoying traditional Swiss attention to excellent customer service. This is why a lot of overseas entities often choose to acquire a seasoned Swiss trust company as the vehicle of their long-term business operations. In this article, you will discover what a Swiss trust company is, why it is so valuable and why you should always look for vintage – rather than newly established – Swiss trust companies.
A trust company – Swiss or not – is normally defined as a business entity organized to provide fiduciary services on behalf of its owners. Trust companies are frequently used for the purposes of estate administration, asset management and investment, to name a few.
Seasoned trust companies are corporations that had been active at one point, but had become dormant for one reason or another. Specialized agencies purchase and reactivate such entities, and make them available for purchase to interested parties. Upon selling the company, such agencies ensure that the buyer receives a tax and liability waiver certificate, meaning that they are able to conduct operations through the trust company without worrying about the “luggage” of what the company did or did not do in the past.
The single most important advantage of a seasoned Swiss trust company over a newly incorporated one is credibility. A seasoned Swiss trust company is one that has been incorporated dozens of years ago (some even as far back as 1920s). When a vintage trust company such as this is acquired by new owners, it still retains its original date of incorporation, meaning that the customer can legitimately claim that his company was founded all the way back in 1920s! Needless to say, this provides immense benefits in the form of credibility, prestige and perception, enabling the client to better negotiate with financial institutions and government officials. It goes without saying, of course, that ownership of a Swiss trust company often enables the client to benefit from advantages typically associated with doing business in Switzerland – favourable tax regimes and discretion on behalf of authorities, to name a few.
Unfortunately, the business of purchasing and re-selling Swiss trust companies has had to deal with issues of fraud and deception. In particular, while preciously few agencies actually own the Swiss trust companies they are selling, many start-ups simply seek to re-sell these companies and do not buy the company themselves until a customer has been found and an agreement signed. While this is not technically illegal, it does mean that, until the moment of handover, these re-seller agencies never truly own the company they’re selling, therefore potentially endangering the arrangement and creating a lot of legal difficulty for the customer. For this reason, it is very important that customers only deal with genuine agencies that legally own the Swiss trust company they’re selling rather than re-sellers, as the latter rarely have the flexibility and control necessary to authoritatively control the transaction.
Conrad Nifares is an employee of First Fidelity Trust – a Swiss-based agency which provides vintage Swiss trust company acquisition services to discerning clients. Unlike the competition, First Fidelity Trust fully owns the seasoned trust companies it offers, and provides its clients with an unparalled range of flexible, custom-tailored solutions all while respecting the privacy and the need for discretion of its clients. FFT’s Swiss trust company services are available to worldwide clients including US nationals.
