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Management
Higher costs fail to deter company formation and use of trusts Continued from p20
anonymity and these are included only if they have a tax consequence within Gibraltar. Imossi reasoned: “Nobody really wants
everything about them out there, no matter if it’s a very wealthy client, or someone less so; it's a private matter.”
The Ultimate Beneficial Ownership Register at Gibraltar Finance was created in June and firms are encouraged to add details when creating new structures, with historic information being required by end-
January. Fiduciary’s website states: “It is usual
for an underlying company to be utilised as a vehicle to hold assets of the Gibraltar trust. The company acquires assets such as real estate, marketable securities, pleasure yachts or any other investments or businesses, and it is the shares in the company that are entirely
owned by the Gibraltar trust. Normal practice is to have a number of companies owned by a trust, each of which holds one asset type.”
Non-residents do not pay tax locally, even when trustees may be Gibraltar residents and it is fully managed from The Rock. Gibraltar has no capital gains tax, gift tax, wealth tax, estate duty, inheritance or death tax, “so it is possible to accumulate income and realise capital gains without a tax liability arising”, Fiduciary states.
Imossi revealed the threshold invest- ment for establishing a structure had risen. “For example, unless the value of the assets to be held in a trust are worth at least £750,000, it doesn’t generally make financial sense, whereas in the old days the value could have been just £200,000,” he held. In a smaller market, “the fee structuring has increased so that, perhaps, for every three clients lost, we onboard a new client with much larger business.”
Significant wealth
Paul Astengo, senior executive at Gibraltar Finance, responsible for growing the private client proposition, including trust and
company management, concurred: “It’s costing more to stand still. There are still very good reasons to place wealth in a structure, but it has to be significant wealth rather than a one-off property, for example.” Special purpose trusts might be used for an educational donation to guarantee payment of a child’s university education, for example and for a set period of time.
ATCOM’s Ellul is looking to create a two-year Gibraltar company law and administration course in 2019, in conjunction with Gibraltar University, rather than having to teach the differences with English Law as now. He estimated that conservatively more than 50 people will be attracted initially, and declared: “You have the alternative of studying English law academic courses, but then you have a huge learning curve on the many Gibraltar law differences.
“At present, people in trust and company management learn through experience – [Gibraltar lawyers have a separate compulsory law course] – so I expect there to be three modules covering Gibraltar
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ATCOM chairman Marc X. Ellul plans course to overcome “many Gibraltar law differences”
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