BVI Asia Trade Mission Brouchure (2018 Edition)
The BVI is one of the financial hubs that Asia has chosen to help push through its global economic strategy.
According to the independent, London-based Capital Economics report, Creating Value: The BVI’s Global Contribution, as of December 2016, two-fifths of all BVI Business Companies were located in China and the rest of Asia, while 75 per cent of Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index was made up of companies with direct linkages to the BVI. Asian companies accounted for 41 per cent of the US$ 1.5 trillion in assets mediated through the BVI, underscoring the offshore investment centre’s growing status as a hub for Chinese overseas investment. Demand among Asian and Chinese companies for offshore centres to facilitate their cross-border business and investment continues to grow. Appeals by China’s senior leadership for companies to invest globally in priority sectors, as well as the need to help support the mainland’s ambitious infrastructure investment scheme have been among the catalysts. The BVI has been successful in facilitating cross-border business because of its popular and flexible corporate structures The BVI’s long and successful relationship with Asia appears set to intensify because of China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The BRI represents new investment channels for the BVI and its business companies, which for three decades have proven successful for Chinese and other Asian investors and corporations doing cross-border trade. Today, the BVI stands at the forefront of international corporate structuring for cross-border transactions and investment worldwide and assists Asian clients in structuring outbound investment across various priority sectors – among them energy, infrastructure, technology and agriculture. The wave of development sweeping across Asia, China and the Belt and Road countries, will surely bolster the strong and unabated preference to incorporate structures in the BVI. The Vistra 2020 report, which examines trends in the offshore finance industry, stated that, when it comes to China, “the BVI is an ‘embedded brand’ and still the go-to for most structuring conduits”.
