Legal Vehicles With Automatic Succession

Recent reforms in jurisdictions like the British Virgin Islands and Panama have shifted from complex to simpler corporate structures, facilitating clearer identification of economic beneficiaries and more efficient succession planning.

As we gear towards a more transparent corporate world, there has been a significant change in the use of the legal vehicles available in our jurisdictions. Previously, it was common to find complex structures with various levels of companies, or companies with bearer shares, which made it difficult to identify economic beneficiaries. Starting on 2011, jurisdictions like the British Virgin Islands (BVI) and later Panama, in 2015, implemented Due Diligence policies that made identifying the economic beneficiary much easier, which in turn changed the way that individuals structured their patrimony through companies. Today, clients seek to create simpler structures whereby they can arrange their succession planning, which helps avoid