NEWS

The number of British entrepreneurs looking to “buy” citizenship from countries offering visa-free access to the European Union has risen sharply, investment migration firms say, as prospects of a post-Brexit trade deal between Britain and the bloc darken.   Investment immigration firm Astons said it had seen a 50% and 30% year-on-year increase in interest from clients seeking Cypriot or Greek citizenship respectively this quarter, less than four months before UK passport-holders are likely to lose their rights to freedom of movement across the EU.   Henley & Partners also reported a rise in requests for advice on investment migration applications to Malta,...

IMMIGRATION BY INVESTMENT NEWS 2020

As the global investment migration heavyweight, China accounts for some two-thirds of applicants globally. In the last decade alone, more than 57,000 Chinese together spent at least US$44 billion on residence by investment programs. But only a tiny proportion of those actually moved to their new country of residence/citizenship. Each year, hundreds (if not thousands) of Chinese investor migrants see their permanent residence permits canceled over their failure to meet physical presence requirements, typically in places like Australia and Canada. In this article, we’ll try to dissect the reasons why Chinese investors are so often migrants on paper only.   #1 –...

IMMIGRATION BY INVESTMENT NEWS 2020

Foreign investment migration firms entering the Chinese market, broadly speaking, follow one (sometimes two) of three business models: Targeting clients directly (B2C), relying on partnerships with local immigration firms for client-flow (B2B), and developing business with chiefly institutional partners. Making the wrong choice often spells disaster.   Few firms can afford to ignore the Chinese investment migration market which, for at least 15 consecutive years, has been the world’s largest. The question, for most, isn’t whether they should penetrate the Chinese market, but how they should go about doing so.   The three prevailing models are:   §  B2B § ...

IMMIGRATION BY INVESTMENT NEWS 2020

In a pandemic world, where most business activities and travel have been, to a great extent, restricted, the downtime caused by coronavirus has allowed many of us to probe into several issues, particularly those relating to how the pandemic is affecting our own corner of the economy.   I’ve used some of the additional time afforded me by all this down-time here in Singapore to interview some Chinese veterans in the sphere of property development and understand their philosophy on overseas real estate investment. I’ve distilled their answers into seven guiding principles.   Chinese overseas investors adhere to these principles...

IMMIGRATION BY INVESTMENT NEWS 2020

Vanuatu’s citizenship by investment programs have grabbed headlines over the last week chiefly for two reasons: First, because the government had signed an exclusive agreement with one of its Master Agents to handle applications from stateless investors. Second, because the country’s Deputy Prime Minister told Radio New Zealand that the government was preparing to issue yellow passports to those naturalizing via investment (as opposed to the ordinary green one issued to natural-born ni-Vanuatu), a statement that drew fervent reactions from the RCBI-community.   In a press statement issued today, prepared especially for IMI, the Chairman of Vanuatu’s Citizenship Commission, Ronald Warsal, for the first time...

IMMIGRATION BY INVESTMENT NEWS 2020

Increased demand for economic citizenship of Vanuatu has given the cyclone-battered south pacific island a massive financial boost, achieving a record US$33.3 million surpluses in the first half of 2020 and marking a 32% year-on-year increase in citizenship-related revenues, exceeding, by August, its annual projection.   These record revenues of 3.8 billion Vatu (US$33.3 million) created courtesy of the country’s Citizenship by Investment programme, comes at a time when such funds are desperately needed to boost Vanuatu’s fragile economy, which has been recently doubly battered, first by the coronavirus pandemic (with many losses in tourism) and then by the category five...

IMMIGRATION BY INVESTMENT NEWS 2020

Grand Duchy has become a preferred destination for funds investing in China The friendship between Adolphe Franck, a Luxembourgish railway worker, and Mao Zedong, founding father of the People’s Republic of China, was the foundation for four decades of close relations between the world's most populous nation and one of its smallest. Franck, an ardent communist, met the Chinese Communist party leader many times for business, sharing his patents on steam locomotives and rising to national fame across China. In 1979. the Bank of China chose the Grand Duchy as the location for its first overseas branch, a move that...

PRIVATE & INTERNATIONAL BANKING NEWS 2020