Spreading our wings in the Year of the Ox
Our Canadian client came to us for assistance in establishing operations in China. Despite our experience to date, doing business in China is never easy, not least because rules and regulations change on a seemingly daily basis! Keeping abreast of rule changes and provincial variations is what we are paid to do, however, and we’ve been able to keep our Canadian friend well posted on the types of business license available to him, as well as those regions/provinces offering greatest incentives or tax breaks.
Being open and transparent is also what we feel we are paid to do and when we assist clients in China we try to be as realistic as possible when giving procedures, costs, timelines and possible bureaucratic hurdles the client may have to jump through. On this occasion, a key challenge was locating a suitable office premises for our client – in China foreign investors can only lease office premises in ‘government-approved’ buildings. Finding the right premises at the right price, and then coordinating the preparation of office lease agreements (all in Chinese, a language our client can’t read!) has been challenging.
For the Indonesia engagement, Healy Consultants has had to draw on all our experience to assist our client with their proposed business expansion into Indonesia.
A potential deal-breaker for this engagement was that our client’s business activity was restricted for foreign investment. This ruled out a traditional 100% foreign-owned company (also known as a PMA), which at least saved the client a high paid up capital requirement and a lengthy process of investment approval at the Indonesia Investment Board (BKPM).
Instead, we are required to set up a Representative Office for the client, which has a more limited activity scope but will at least allow the client to conduct preliminary market research in Indonesia on behalf of its foreign parent company.
Finally, the France engagement proceeded smoothly, the only slight anomaly being the requirement to set up a corporate bank account for the company to lodge the capital prior to completing incorporation. This is unusual in most ‘western’ jurisdictions.