Vistra promotes Seychelles as an international finance centre to attract more foreign investors |10 June 2019
A souvenir photograph of stakeholders an guests at the event
Vistra, a corporate service provider present in over 40 countries including Seychelles, has revealed its recent research findings on the corporate services industry to local stakeholders.
The offshore company provides fiduciary, trusts, fund administration and private client services, and its presence in Seychelles dates back to 2004 when the organisation first entered the market as Offshore Incorporations Limited (OIL).
Vistra Seychelles, in particular, provides services such as the setting-up and administration of various offshore companies or International Business Companies (IBC) among others.
In the report titled ‘Vistra 2020: The disruption advantage, opportunity in a changing world’, Vistra surveyed over 800 of its industry peers to identify the trends and issues facing the industry.
Only 23% of these respondents said that they are very confident in the ease of doing business across borders during the next 12 months, a clear indication of the uncertainty that the current geo-political landscape is creating.
In the Vistra’s ranking of the most popular jurisdiction, Seychelles remained at the bottom of the table in the 17th position followed by Mauritius, in 16th position.
The five top jurisdictions on this list are Hong Kong, British Virgin Islands (BVI), United Kingdom, United States and Singapore.
Simon Filmer, the global head of company formation, corporate and private clients at Vistra, remarked that Mauritius is increasingly becoming popular as the gateway to Africa since many foreign companies that are investing in Africa opt to use the island nation as the regional hub.
Seychelles, however, is mostly seen as a conduit international financial centre (IFC), where offshore companies makes use of its unique offshore company laws that make it attractive for foreign investors to form entities.
With the introduction of the economic substance laws in several offshore companies, Mr Filmer noted that Seychelles has the perfect opportunity to learn from these countries so as to implement the legislation in the future.
“All of the other jurisdictions that compete directly with the Seychelles have already introduced the substance legislation which is now required by the EU. The Seychelles has yet to introduce the legislation, so it has an opportunity to review the legislations that have been introduced by the other jurisdictions, and pick and choose the best parts of all of those, to make sure they get it right because this is the most important thing that’s happening within the offshore sector at the moment.”
The event concluded with a panel discussion moderated by the managing director of Vistra Seychelles, Neil Puresh.