Jersey Foundations: A New String To Jersey’s Bow

By Oliver Donagher Associate Director, Horizon Group

Like the foundations of a house, Jersey has in recent years been working on a law to strengthen its foundations as a world-class leader in the field of Offshore Financial Services.

The new Foundations (Jersey) Law came into force in July 2009. This new legal entity of a Foundation is a combination of a Trust and a Company and its characteristics can be summarised as follows:

• It can hold assets in its own name
• It can enter into a contract, it can sue and be sued in its own name
• It has a Council of Members to administer the business of the Foundation
• There are no shareholders, hence some refer to it as an Orphan Entity