Our economy has seen better days. We've all heard the talk
of "unprecedented circumstances" and "tough economic
headwinds." We are finding that businesses are using these
circumstances as an opportunity to review their operations and
proactively looking for ways to simplify their businesses.
Entities Upon Entities
"Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication" is a
famous quote by Leonardo da Vinci that I came across recently. It
made me think that I'm not sure that many large corporates
abide by this tenet. There's a tendency to complicate things by
creating more legal entities even when they are not needed.
Corporations tend to form these entities to meet specific
operational or financial objectives or to optimize their tax
position, or they are inherited through M&A activity. While
they don't set out to make things complicated, these entities
can proliferate like knotweed and, like with knotweed, elimination
requires determination. The longer you leave it, the
