 | |
| Industry | Professional services |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2015  |
| Fate | Merged with Ocorian (2020) |
Estera was a global provider of corporate, trust, fund and accounting services. The company was created following a management buyout of the fiduciary group of Appleby. It rebranded as Estera in April 2016. [1] In February 2020 Estera merged with Ocorian. [2]
In December 2015, " Appleby Fiduciary Business (AFB)", a Bermuda registered company and a branch of the law firm Appleby, was separated out legally from Appleby (Bermuda) through a management buy out by the private equity firm "Bridgepoint". [3] In April 2016, it changed its name to "Estera", with the Group Chief Executive Officer being Farah Ballands. [4]
Estera employed 550 people and had offices in 11 jurisdictions: Bermuda, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Guernsey, Hong Kong, Isle of Man, Jersey, Luxembourg, Malta, Mauritius, United Kingdom. [5]
Gary O'Connor, the managing director of Estera Trust (Isle of Man) Limited, was shortlisted for the Institute of Directors Young Director of the Year award in September 2017. [6] In July 2019, it was announced that Estera would be merged with Inflexion Private Equity's company Ocorian. [7]
The name of the new company was chosen based on input from staff. [8]
Estera was involved in the Paradise Papers leak. [9]
In 2017, Estera acquired Morgan Sharpe (in Guernsey), Heritage financial services group (in Belfast and Malta) and Headstart s.a.r.l (Luxembourg). [10]
Offshore investment is the keeping of money in a jurisdiction other than one's country of residence. Offshore jurisdictions are used to pay less tax in many countries by large and small-scale investors. Poorly regulated offshore domiciles have served historically as havens for tax evasion, money laundering, or to conceal or protect illegally acquired money from law enforcement in the investor's country. However, the modern, well-regulated offshore centres allow legitimate investors to take advantage of higher rates of return or lower rates of tax on that return offered by operating via such domiciles. The advantage to offshore investment is that such operations are both legal and less costly than those offered in the investor's country—or "onshore".
The offshore magic circle is the set of the largest multi-jurisdictional law firms who specialise in offshore financial centres, especially the laws of the British Overseas Territories of Bermuda, Cayman Islands, and British Virgin Islands, and the Crown dependencies of Jersey and Guernsey.
Appleby is a leading offshore legal services provider.
Butterfield, officially The Bank of N. T. Butterfield & Son Limited, is a bank founded and based in Bermuda. It provides services to clients from Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Guernsey and Jersey, where its principal banking operations are located, and The Bahamas, Switzerland, Singapore and the United Kingdom, where it offers specialized financial services. Banking services comprise deposit, cash management and lending for individual, business and institutional clients. Wealth management services are composed of trust, private banking, asset management and custody. In Bermuda, the Cayman Islands and Guernsey, Butterfield offers both banking and wealth management. In The Bahamas, Singapore and Switzerland, Butterfield offers select wealth management services. In the UK, Butterfield offers residential property lending. In Jersey, it offers banking and wealth management services. Butterfield is publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange and the Bermuda Stock Exchange.
Ogier is a law firm with offices in the BVI, Cayman, Guernsey, Ireland, Jersey and Luxembourg. It is a member of the offshore magic circle.
A tax haven is a term, sometimes used negatively and for political reasons, to describe a place with very low tax rates for non-domiciled investors, even if the official rates may be higher.
Intertrust is an international trust and corporate management company based in Amsterdam, Netherlands. In November 2022, it was acquired by Corporation Service Company. The company is best known for its fiduciary services, which includes tax, trust, business management and outsourcing processes. It is the largest trust office in the Netherlands.
The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, Inc. (ICIJ), is an independent global network of 280 investigative journalists and over 140 media organizations spanning more than 100 countries. It is based in Washington, D.C., with personnel in Australia, France, Spain, Hungary, Serbia, Belgium and Ireland.
The Süddeutsche Zeitung, published in Munich, Bavaria, is one of the largest daily newspapers in Germany. The tone of SZ is mainly described as centre-left, liberal, social-liberal, progressive-liberal, and social-democrat.
Mossack Fonseca & Co. was a Panamanian law firm and corporate service provider. At one time it was the world's fourth-largest provider of offshore financial services. From its 1977 foundation until the April 2016 publication of the Panama Papers, it remained mostly obscure, even though it sat at the heart of the global offshore industry and acted for about 300,000 companies. More than half were registered in British tax havens, as well as in the United Kingdom.
Maitland(a part of Apex Group) is a privately-owned investment holding company. In 2021, its Private and Corporate Client Services business was acquired by Stonehage Fleming and in 2022 its Fund and ManCo business was acquired by Apex Group.
The Panama Papers are 11.5 million leaked documents that were published beginning on April 3, 2016. The papers detail financial and attorney–client information for more than 214,488 offshore entities. The documents, some dating back to the 1970s, were created by, and taken from, former Panamanian offshore law firm and corporate service provider Mossack Fonseca, and compiled with similar leaks into a searchable database.
Ocorian is a provider of trust, administration and fiduciary services for companies, institutions, individuals and funds. The company has connections to the offshore magic circle. It was founded in Jersey as law firm Bedell Cristin, with Bedell Trust providing financial services.
The Paradise Papers are a set of over 13.4 million confidential electronic documents relating to offshore investments that were leaked to the German reporters Frederik Obermaier and Bastian Obermayer, from the newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. The newspaper shared them with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, and a network of more than 380 journalists. Some of the details were made public on 5 November 2017 and stories are still being released.
Reginald Woodifield Appleby was an English lawyer, practising in Bermuda, who in 1898 founded the predecessor of the law firm that now trades as Appleby. He served as a major in the Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps during the First World War, and was a member of the Legislative Council of Bermuda.
Asiaciti Trust is an international financial company established in Hong Kong, with operations in Asia, the Americas, and the Pacific. Its services revolve around corporate services, fiduciary matters, wealth protection, and administration.
A brass plate company or brass plate trust is a legally constituted company lacking meaningful connection with the location of incorporation. The name is based on a company whose only tangible existence in its jurisdiction of incorporation is the nameplate attached to the wall outside its registered office. The registered office is often the same office and address of the local professional service firm(s) or corporate service provider(s) (CSPs), who act as local support to the company. Brass plate structures are associated with tax havens, corporate tax havens, and offshore financial centres.
Conduit OFC and sink OFC is an empirical quantitative method of classifying corporate tax havens, offshore financial centres (OFCs) and tax havens.
James R. Hines Jr. is an American economist and a founder of academic research into corporate-focused tax havens, and the effect of U.S. corporate tax policy on the behaviors of U.S. multinationals. His papers were some of the first to analyse profit shifting, and to establish quantitative features of tax havens. Hines showed that being a tax haven could be a prosperous strategy for a jurisdiction, and controversially, that tax havens can promote economic growth. Hines showed that use of tax havens by U.S. multinationals had maximized long-term U.S. exchequer tax receipts, at the expense of other jurisdictions. Hines is the most cited author on the research of tax havens, and his work on tax havens was relied upon by the CEA when drafting the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017.
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