Helping clients go global

About the client

Our client is a family owned business, specialising in IT, located in the US. The Managing Director has grown the business rapidly and back in 2017, they received significant investment from a venture capitalist firm. This investment allowed them to expand and further develop their IT platform. They then secured a $40m contract with a global bank to use their platform worldwide.

The task

Buzzacott were introduced to the CFO early in 2018, through a connection with one Buzzacott’s partners. At this point the work seemed like a straightforward subsidiary of a US parent company. However, on receipt of the news about all the investment the firm had received and an impressive contract to use their product worldwide, the CFO informed us that they needed help with a global expansion to set up in 25 EMEA countries.

“We are very proud of the enduring relationship and trust we have built with the client in a matter of a few months and the fact that they offered the APAC countries to us as well. The client had also looked at other more specialised firms who could have done this and each time he has been disappointed by their lack of flexibility and hard sell attitudes, so rather than going with a much larger firm, he chose Buzzacott as we can be trusted for our expertise and our extensive referrer contacts to get the job done.” 

Claire Collins, Partner, Corporate Team

What we did

We immediately approached our contacts at PrimeGlobal, which had connections in each of those 25 countries. We were then very quickly put in touch with the right people and in many of the countries, the necessary lawyers needed to actually incorporate the entities. 

Within this, we connected with these PrimeGlobal firms, asking the right questions as each country has different laws to ensure that our client could get set up in the easiest and most cost-effective way. In particular, we asked our connections about the varying procedures and requirements related to:

• Minimum share capital anywhere from £1 to £200,000
• Need for local director or majority of board to be local
• Need for audit
• Need for bank account
• Need for business license
• Foreign ownership restrictions
• Certification requirements

Some countries requirements were straight forward enabling us to obtain a company in a couple of days, whereas other countries said normal time it takes is between six to seven months to obtain a company. However, we persevered and reassured the client of the extended timelines to manage their expectations. We also undertook the initial assessments of local issues and whether a company or branch would be preferable. We then summarised the available options to the client, so they could to make the final decision and not waste their time with having to assess what was needed.

Outcome

Buzzacott, along with the help of member firms of PrimeGlobal, successfully set up our client in 25 EMEA countries. The client was so impressed with our work ethic and professionalism that they very soon after asked us to also assist with the setup in some APAC and Latin American countries. So, this company has now been successfully set up in 50 different countries worldwide.

We were able to show our client the benefits of using an association of experienced accounting firms, who are flexible and responsive to client needs, all over the world to provide an efficient and cost-effective solution rather than going through a multinational accountancy firm. The client valued our work ethic and that they were dealing with a single firm and not 50 versions of us.

The client's CFO remarked:

“With a large injection of investment into our business and then securing a huge contract, we needed a firm that could help us go global. Buzzacott have been fantastic in helping us do this. They played a vital role acting as the main point of contact between us and 25 different countries, resulting in not only tremendous cost savings but also time – which greatly aided me. I was so impressed with the work they did, we had no second thoughts about asking them to do the same for additional countries in the APAC region and Latin America – totaling 50 different countries!”

About the author

Claire Collins
Partner Business Services
collinsc@buzzacott.co.uk

Get in touch

If you would like to speak to a member of our team about how we can work together to support your business with its global expansion plans, please contact Claire directly through the contact details above or send us a message via the form below and we'll contact you shortly.