A relocation from a Western European jurisdiction to the Gulf involves four workstreams that are usually run in parallel by different advisers: the immigration position, the departure tax position, the corporate structure and the banking. Each is capable of being handled competently in isolation, and handling them in isolation is the reason the exercise so often costs more than it should.
The dependencies run in both directions. The residency application may require an entity that has not yet been formed. The entity’s treatment depends on where its directors will be resident, which depends on the timing of the move. The departure position depends on what was held on the day of departure, which the corporate work may be in the process of changing. The banking depends on all three and cannot sensibly be started first.
Establishing the departure position first
The first task is to fix, in writing, what the principal holds and where, on a date certain, and to obtain advice in the departure jurisdiction on what leaving would mean on those facts. Several European jurisdictions impose charges on emigration, apply continuing obligations for a period after departure, or determine residence by tests that do not align with the arrival jurisdiction’s. None of this can be assessed against a structure that is simultaneously being rearranged.
This step also identifies the actions that must be completed before departure because they will be unavailable afterwards. Certain reorganisations, distributions and elections depend on the principal still being resident, and the fact that they were not considered is not a ground for reopening them later. Establishing this list early converts an open-ended set of possibilities into a short, dated sequence.
The steps that must happen before departure are few and unforgiving; the steps that can happen afterwards are many, and are routinely attempted first.
Then the entity, then the residency
Where the residency pathway is one that requires a company, the entity has to exist before the application, which makes the choice of pathway a corporate decision as much as an immigration one. The activities on the licence, the premises arrangement and the shareholding all follow from what the principal intends to do, and forming an entity purely to support an application, without regard to the activity it will actually carry on, creates a structure that has to be corrected almost immediately.
The corporate work also has to account for the entities left behind. A company in the departure jurisdiction whose sole director is about to become resident in the Gulf may acquire management and control there while remaining registered where it is, producing a dual position that neither jurisdiction was asked about. Where such a company is to continue, the board arrangements need to be settled before the move rather than discovered at the first audit.
Banking comes last, and takes longest
Banking is placed last because it is the step that examines all of the others. The institution will ask what the entity does, who owns and controls it, where the principal is resident, where the funds originate and why the arrangement is shaped as it is. Each of those answers is unstable while the relocation is in progress, and an application submitted mid-move is an application that will be amended, which is a materially worse position than one submitted late.
Placing it last does not mean leaving it until the end. The documentation the institution will require — the corporate record, the source of wealth narrative, the evidence of residence and the explanation of the structure — is assembled throughout the preceding steps, and is largely a by-product of doing them properly. What is deferred is the approach to the institution, not the preparation for it, and groups that treat the two as the same thing generally begin the banking conversation with a file that describes a position they have since left.
This note is general in application and does not constitute legal, tax or regulatory advice. It describes practice observed across institutions and should not be relied upon in relation to any particular relocation.