Corporate haven, corporate tax haven, or multinational tax haven is used to describe a jurisdiction that multinational corporations find attractive for establishing subsidiaries or incorporation of regional or main company headquarters, mostly due to favourable tax regimes, and/or favourable secrecy laws, and/or favourable regulatory regimes.
Linklaters LLP is a British multinational law firm, headquartered in London, England. Founded in 1838, it is one of the five prestigious "Magic Circle" law firms known for their corporate and financial expertise. It currently employs over 3100 lawyers across 31 offices in 21 countries.
Clifford Chance LLP is a British multinational law firm headquartered in London, England, and a member of the "Magic Circle", a group of leading London-based multinational law firms.
Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP is a British multinational law firm headquartered in London, England, and a member of the so-called "Magic Circle". The firm has 28 offices in 17 jurisdictions across Asia, Europe, the Middle East and North America. It advises national and multinational corporations, financial institutions and governments.
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".
Maples Group is a multi-jurisdictional firm providing legal and financial services, headquartered in the Cayman Islands. It has offices in many financial centres around the world, including several tax neutral jurisdictions. Its law firm is a member of the offshore magic circle, and specialises in advising on the laws of the Cayman Islands, Ireland, Luxembourg, Jersey and the British Virgin Islands, across a range of legal services including commercial litigation, intellectual property, sport, and finance, in which the firm has a focus on the structuring of tax efficient legal structures.
Hassans International Law Firm Limited is the largest law firm in Gibraltar. It has approximately 90 lawyers and was established in 1939 by Sir Joshua Hassan GBE, KCMG, LVO, GMH, KC. The firm's current senior partner is James Levy CBE KC, nephew of Sir Joshua. Former Hassans' partner Fabian Picardo KC is the current Chief Minister of Gibraltar.
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, Guernsey and The Isle of Man.
Appleby is a leading offshore legal services provider.
The Silver Circle is a group of elite corporate law firms headquartered in London that has evolved significantly as the UK legal market has been affected by globalisation and mergers. The law firms generally described by The Lawyer magazine as comprising the Silver Circle were historically Ashurst, Herbert Smith, Macfarlanes, SJ Berwin and Travers Smith.
The Big Six is a term that has traditionally referred to the six largest Australian law firms, as assessed by revenue and lawyer head count. From the mid-1980s, the phrase was in regular use to distinguish the largest Australian firms, collectively, from their smaller competitors. While informal, it was a widely-used descriptor, appearing in news items, industry commentary and scholarly articles.
Walkers is an offshore law firm headquartered on the Cayman Islands. Walkers provides legal, corporate, compliance and fiduciary services to global corporations, financial institutions, capital markets participants and investment fund managers. Walkers practices the laws of six jurisdictions from ten offices globally. It is a member of the offshore magic circle.
A tax haven is a term, often used pejoratively, to describe a place with very low tax rates for non-domiciled investors, even if the official rates may be higher.
An offshore financial centre (OFC) is defined as a "country or jurisdiction that provides financial services to nonresidents on a scale that is incommensurate with the size and the financing of its domestic economy."
The legal services sector of the United Kingdom is a significant part of the national economy; it had a total output of £22.6 billion in 2013, up from 10.6 billion in 2001, and is equivalent to 1.6% of the country's gross domestic product for that year. The sector has a trade surplus is £3.1 billion in 2013 and directly employees 316,000 people, two-thirds of whom are located outside London. The UK is the world's most international market for legal services. It allows virtually unrestricted access for foreign firms, resulting in over 200 foreign law firms with offices in London and other cities in the UK. Around half of these are US firms, with the remainder mainly from Europe, Australia and Canada. The UK legal market has a strong global position due to the popularity of English law. Some 27% of the world's 320 legal jurisdictions use English Common law.
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.
Conduit OFC and sink OFC is an empirical quantitative method of classifying corporate tax havens, offshore financial centres (OFCs) and tax havens.
Ireland has been labelled as a tax haven or corporate tax haven in multiple financial reports, an allegation which the state has rejected in response. Ireland is on all academic "tax haven lists", including the § Leaders in tax haven research, and tax NGOs. Ireland does not meet the 1998 OECD definition of a tax haven, but no OECD member, including Switzerland, ever met this definition; only Trinidad & Tobago met it in 2017. Similarly, no EU–28 country is amongst the 64 listed in the 2017 EU tax haven blacklist and greylist. In September 2016, Brazil became the first G20 country to "blacklist" Ireland as a tax haven.
Qualifying Investor Alternative Investment Fund or QIAIF is a Central Bank of Ireland regulatory classification established in 2013 for Ireland's five tax-free legal structures for holding assets. The Irish Collective Asset-management Vehicle or ICAV is the most popular of the five Irish QIAIF structures, it is the main tax-free structure for foreign investors holding Irish assets.
