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German shelf UG - will baks trust it?

reno69

New member
May 30, 2020
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Dear members,

I am about to incorporate my next company.

I picked Germany as the best jurisdiction. Reasons are not to be debated in the post. Just accept the fact that Germany is the only choice I have, and refrain from asking why: I cannot disclose it here.

As a non-german citizen and non-german resident I then need to setup a company in a reasonably short amount of time. I thought to avail of one of these services:

scur24.com
youco24.com
foris.com
de-trust.de

First question: does anybody has any feedback on any of them?

I picked them as they seem to be fairly specialized: rather than offering incorporation in 100+1 jurisdictions they do Germany and Germany only. To me that,s a great plus.

Now comes the harder part: I'll need to use this shelf company to open several bank accounts.

The reason is that I want the business to be as resilient as possible. If things go as planned, I'll have plenty of money flowing through the bank accounts, and a good chunk of it will need to be converted into crypto.

Having multiple bank accounts will protect me from having all the funds frozen, and allow me to continue the operations while I get my lawyers to unfreeze the accounts that ran into problems (and pay the lawyers in the first place...).

Although the business is a 100% legit import and distribution company (I will have all the distribution contracts in hand, purchase orders, company registration documents of my clients etc. Is anything else needed?), I do believe that converting some hundreds of thousand of euros per week to crypto is likely to generate tons of problems.

As I will need to stay focused on the business, my idea is to open at the very least 10 bank accounts (I repeat, banks, not crappy EMIs), and use each of them, or a couple of them, with one exchange, hence having 5 to 10 exchanges at my disposal. In that way, even if something goes wrong with MANY banks and MANy exchanges, I'd still be operational.

Germany turn out to be a very crypto friendly nation, with banks like Fidor (and some more) that directly offer an exchange, which seem to be good news for me. Still, I want more resiliency, hence I'd still go for many banks.

That bring me to my last question: some time ago I think I read on this very forum that shelf companies are really problematic to work with banks: many would just refuse to open a bank account if they find out that the company is a shelf company.

Is that true? and is it the case for any jurisdiction?

In that case I may just go for a regular UG, and wait a little bit more to be operational.

So, summing up:

1) Do you know and/or can recommend any of the agents mentioned above?

2) Besides contracts with my sales agents and distributors, Purchase Orders, company registrations of my clients, proforma invoices, Do I need anything else as a proof of funds to banks and exchanges, to minimize problems?

3) Will a shelf company make my bank opening more problematic, and is it advisable to use a regular company?

Thanks for your contribution!
 
I have no experience with German companies, but as far as I know, UG’s in general don’t have the best reputation.
I would expect that it will be very difficult to open a bank account for a UG with a director who is neither a resident nor citizen.
Why don’t you at least incorporate a proper GmbH?
 
I have no experience with German companies, but as far as I know, UG’s in general don’t have the best reputation.
I would expect that it will be very difficult to open a bank account for a UG with a director who is neither a resident nor citizen.
Why don’t you at least incorporate a proper GmbH?

no problems on this end so far. I have consulted various people opening a UG (+ bank account) in Germany, neither a resident nor a citizen.

I do not offer services like this on here though, so don’t try to contact me.
 
With the big banks like Deutsche or Commerzbank it is even a pain in the a*s if you incorporate a company as a german living germany. They will ask you a fuckton of questions about your business and yourself. However it is not impossible if you are well prepared and actually act professional (also setup a website and s**t) it should work out. Also you should check out Penta and try local banks where your company office is located.

The biggest issue actually comes with a UG because it requires low start capital, a gmbh is much more trustworthy in germany and people nowadays still think you are not really serious if you are running an UG. Also be aware that you have to save a certain amount of your profit (I thinkt it was 25% but I am not quire sure) until you hit 25k EUR (Starting capital of an gmbh). You can then decide if you want to transform into a gmbh or not.
 
I have no experience with German companies, but as far as I know, UG’s in general don’t have the best reputation.
I would expect that it will be very difficult to open a bank account for a UG with a director who is neither a resident nor citizen.
Why don’t you at least incorporate a proper GmbH?
UG is like the easier form of GMBH. Anyway GMBH is really better for banks and all regulators