Corporate Business

Pioneering, innovative and leading the way in global business solutions, the BVI is an internationally respected business and finance centre with a proven commitment to connect markets, empower clients and facilitate investment, trade and capital flow.

BVI companies are holding companies, joint venture vehicles, listing vehicles, investment funds, as well as efficient and convenient structures for real estate investment or holding high value assets such as ships or aircraft. With major respected companies worldwide using BVI Business Companies to manage their cross-border activities, the BVI is home to part of the group structure of over 140 major businesses listed on the London, New York or Hong Kong main stock exchanges.

BVI companies are extensively used by smaller businesses and individuals too. BVI companies are hugely versatile operating in multiple roles and industries. Elsewhere, BVI companies are used equally successfully for family, trust and succession planning, and, ever increasingly, as platforms for a new wave of entrepreneurs from emerging markets. The BVI companies can be found operating in almost every sector of the world economy, arranging structures for projects and transactions in such areas as oil and gas, metal and minerals, manufacturing, electronics and even food and agriculture.

Recent studies have shown that the investment mediated by the BVI as an international business and finance centre, and by BVI companies in particular, supports around 2.2 million jobs worldwide, with China accounting for nearly two-fifths and Europe one-fifth. In terms of trade, BVI corporate structures are thought to support 12,000 jobs in the US alone.

BVI companies are believed to hold some US$ 1.5 trillion assets, equivalent to two per cent of global GDP - a substantial portion of which is firmly invested back into the world economy, with the United Nations ranking the BVI as the seventh largest source of outward flows of funds and capital in 2015.

As a result of the BVI advantage, BVI business companies worldwide now number approximately one million, of which over 420,000 are active. Driving the BVI’s success is one of the most innovative and efficient electronic systems for incorporating companies and administering corporate filings and records – the BVI Registry of Corporate Affairs' “Virtual Integrated Registry Regulatory General Information Network” or "VIRRGIN". Using VIRRGIN, incorporations can take place within 48 hours, and VIRRGIN filing procedures have recently been streamlined even further.

In 2015, the BVI Registry introduced a Premium Services Department to provide an express "Premium Service" for time sensitive transactions, with extra fees applying. Transactions for which the Premium Service is available include filings for time sensitive, complex and special transactions such as continuations, mergers, amendments to memoranda and articles of association and registration of charges. In most cases, filings made using the Premium Service can be processed within four hours.

"VIRRGIN Lite" was launched in early 2016 to allow users located in Hong Kong external access to the online BVI Registry system from outside the BVI. A limited number of natural person user accounts are available to each licensee. Transactions such as name reservations and company searches can be performed using the VIRRGIN Lite service. External users also have the ability to commit funds from the licensee's local deposit account.

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Shareholders, investors, and those providing finance to BVI companies know that BVI companies exist under the oversight of the BVI FSC. As such, BVI companies are subject to a respected legal and judicial system in a jurisdiction that has been named among the best regulated in the world, upholding the highest global standards.

It is no exaggeration to say that in virtually every corner of the world where businesses are run, profits are being generated, people are being employed and local taxes are being paid by companies that are domiciled in the BVI. The BVI is truly the international partner of choice.