Today Canada is the seventh-largest economy. Many companies are owned by private entities, however, the government participate in the health-care system as well as supervises some services, such as public transportation and utility industries. The Canadian economy is quite diverse and quite well-developed.
The biggest part of the Canadian economy is international trade and export. Currently the U.S.A. is Canada’s biggest trade partner. In Canada international trade accounts for nearly 45% of the GDP, considering the fact that free trade agreements between Canada and the U.S. have dramatically increased trade by eliminating custom duties. Despite quite small size of its population, the Canadian economy is currently one of the most blossoming in the world.
Every of the country’s strategic industries are extremely well-developed. Even though the agricultural sector is small, it utilizes advantage of the Canada’s numerous natural resources scattered all around the country. Considering all that Canada is an attractive destination for global businessmen and corporations. Canadian flexible tax legislation provides room for utilization of the holding structures: the country hosts several big holdings.
ATCO group ATCO group is a one of the biggest Canadian holding companies, having big net turnover and assets. Today this corporation employs almost 7 000 specialists of different professions. Holding’s subsidiary companies are diverse, but most of them are in either the gas / electricity or construction industries.
ATCO was founded in 1947, by S. Don Southern who gave a minority stake to his son Ron Southern, under the name Alberta Trailer Hire, renting fifteen utility trailers in the Calgary area.[3] As the company’s operations grew, they also began to sell trailers, first becoming the Alberta Trailer Company, then ATCO. By the early 1960s, the company had operations across North America and in Australia.
In 2004, with the deregulation of the retail energy industry in Alberta, ATCO sold the retail operations of ATCO Gas and ATCO Electric to Direct Energy Marketing Ltd.; ATCO Gas and ATCO Electric still operate as distributors (owning and operating the infrastructure that delivers natural gas or electricity in its service territories) but are no longer in the retail market. As part of the sale to DEML, DEML contracted call center and billing services from ATCO I-Tek.
DRI Capital DRI Capital Inc. is a local Toronto-based Canadian healthcare royalty fund manager, a kind of private fund. Holding company’s scope of duties includes purchasing robust and predictable royalty streams from already existing pharmaceutical medicine, thus, providing constant profit to the investors.
The holding was established back in year 1992. During first year of conducting business activity it quickly went public on the Toronto Stock Exchange and acquired a royalty interest in the innovative British biotechnology development company.
Great-West Lifeco Great-West Lifeco is mostly an insurance oriented Canadian holding company, operating on the territory of North America, Europe and Asia using 5 local subsidiaries around the world. Most of the businesses Great-West Lifeco has indirect control over are part of its largest subsidiary: The Great-West Life Assurance Company; the rest are supervised by the located in the United States subsidiary branch.
Onex Corporation Onex Corporation is a private owned equity investment company and holding structure located not far from Toronto, Ontario, Canada. In year 2016, the company had estimated $22 billion worth of net assets under its management. The company is headquartered in the Brookfield Place, Toronto, with several branches in New York City, New Jersey, and London.
The firm invests in a wide array of industries. Onex Corporation previously has demonstrated a specific interest in acquiring equity shares of the high-cost manufacturing industry companies and subsequently turning them into cheap, low cost suppliers.
Germany is a social market economy with a large capital stock, a highly qualified workforce, a high level of innovation and low levels of corruption. It is the largest economy in Europe and the fourth largest nation in the world in terms of nominal GDP. In addition to the intelligent economy and productive market structure, Germany also offers investment opportunities in its real estate segment.
What influences the German real estate market? The volatility of the real estate market can be explained by numerous macroeconomic and social factors in the country. Due to the zero interest rate policy of the European Central Bank, mortgage interest rates remain at record lows and offer historically favorable financing conditions. In addition, the quantitative easing (QE) policy being pursued by the ECB is leading to higher liquidity, increasing investment pressure as investors seek potential investment opportunities with above-average returns in relatively safe sectors. QE is also weakening the euro, making the German real estate market even more attractive to investors from outside the eurozone.
New projects and construction activities lag far behind the growing demand, which leads to rising property prices. The German Property Index (GPI), which measures the return on all real estate investments in Germany, reached 14.7% in 2016, a record level since German reunification. The demand for high-quality real estate is increasing due to the demographic and overall economic development in Germany – ongoing urbanization and growing metropolitan areas. Germany is experiencing a positive reversal in birth rates and other demographic factors. The birth rate rose from 1.39 to 1.50 per woman between 2011 and 2015. In addition, Germany has a persistent migration surplus, which can partially compensate for the demographic imbalance.
Commercial real estate, especially office space, is also in high demand due to record employment and the low unemployment rate, and is also benefiting from increasing purchasing power and high consumer spending. Logistics and warehouse real estate is crucial for growing businesses and is therefore in high demand due to the increase in wholesale and retail trade. Below you will find an overview of the most important sectors of the German real estate market.
Residential Properties The residential property market has managed to recover from the financial crisis and the market stagnation in the years after 2009. The construction projects of residential properties have increased steadily in the previous years leading to approximately 277,000 completed housing units in 2016. In 2015, residential property construction with a total investment of 170 billion EUR accounted for 60% of the total construction volume in Germany. Despite a meaningful increase in the granted construction permits (375,400 granted permits in 2016) and record high levels of completed projects, the demand still significantly surpasses the volume of completed residential projects.
Future outlook expects an increase in new construction permit requests and reaching 272,000 units per year till 2020 and further slowing down to 230,000 units per year until 2030. Meanwhile, in the short term, the residential property could surge to 380,000 units due to increased immigration.
However, the demand levels for residential properties significantly differ from region to region. In some regions, the gap between the demand and available properties could close soon, particularly in Eastern Germany. Meanwhile, in some regions, particularly in thriving urban areas, the available housing units will remain very scarce.
Along with the insufficient supply, quoted rents have increased accordingly. Especially in large cities, the trend of growing rents has been rather dynamic. For example, the annual growth rate of housing rents in Germany has been around 1.7% since 2004. Meanwhile, rent increased by 3.9% and 3.5% annually in Berlin and Munich accordingly. Both cities experienced a 6% yearly growth in purchase prices in this real estate sector.
Office Properties Similarly as residential properties, also office properties’ market is in a good and forward-looking shape mainly due to positive migration balance and historically low unemployment rates. In 2016, approximately 3.9 million square meters of office space was rented in the top 7 cities in Germany. This indicates a growth of 12% in comparison to the previous period. A particularly dynamic development was observed in Frankfurt, Cologne and Stuttgart with growth rates ranging between 25% and 48.4%. Meanwhile, Hamburg, Dusseldorf, Munich and Berlin have experienced a cool-down in floor-space turnover in comparison to previous years.
The overall vacancy rate of office properties has decreased due to several factors: a dynamic demand, a slow expansion of floor space and high pre-letting rates. Across the top 7 cities mentioned above, the vacancy rate decreased by 0.7% points to 4.9%. In the top 7 real estate locations in Germany, the prime office rents range between 21 EUR/m2 and 37.50 EUR/m2 giving an attractive potential for investment return. This especially applies to Berlin, where rents have increased by more than 17% in comparison to 2015 reaching 28.7 EUR/m2. Currently, the highest office rents are in Frankfurt and Munich (37.50 EUR/m2 and 35 EUR/m2 accordingly).
Local investors retain the dominant market position accounting for around 60% of the total transaction activity in office property market. Meanwhile, foreign investors account for approximately two fifths (or 20.9 billion EUR) of the transaction volume.
Multinational companies and governments around the world are increasingly looking to Africa as a new business destination. Africa's economy has grown at a rate of around 5.3% per year over the last decade and six of the world's ten fastest growing economies are located here. These countries have a fast-growing middle class that contributes to rapid urbanization that is increasing faster than their cities' infrastructure can keep up. It is a common misconception that many economies in Africa are heavily dependent on energy production. In reality, the oil and gas sector accounted for only 11% of Nigeria's GDP in 2014, while the construction sector accounted for 20%.
When considering doing business in Africa, it is not a matter of choosing just one country or all 54; A regional approach makes more sense. Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, refers to sub-Saharan countries such as Angola, Kenya, South Africa and Nigeria. Many companies already doing business in Africa are separating their businesses in North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa due to the stark economic, linguistic and cultural differences between the two regions. Here are our top 5 African countries for doing business:
Mauritius Mauritius is known for offering an extremely favorable business environment for investment and business growth. The process of incorporating a company and starting new business activities in Mauritius is believed to be straightforward and relatively easy. Mauritius' economy is mainly based on textiles, tourism, sugar and financial services, although recently other sectors such as renewable energy and information technology are expanding rapidly. The World Bank ranked Mauritius 49th in its Doing Business 2017 ranking, largely due to its pro-business approach to dealing with building permits, enforcing contracts and protecting minority investors. Another ranking of African countries places Mauritius first based on factors such as law and security, economy, human development and human rights.
Rwanda Despite nearly a decade of Rwanda's civil war, the country's leaders and citizens alike have worked to achieve a healthy business climate and a strong overall economy. According to the World Bank, Rwanda is the second easiest place to do business in Africa and ranks 56th in the Doing Business ranking. This is because the procedures for registering a property, obtaining credit and trading across borders have been greatly simplified. Tourism is currently the fastest growing sector in Rwanda. According to our research, businesses can be incorporated and operating in as little as three days.
Botswana Since gaining independence, Botswana has had one of the fastest per capita economic growth rates in the world. As the government works to diversify the country's profitable industries, the mining of diamonds and other precious metals is currently the main contributor to the country's economy. Recently, Botswana has managed to reduce the time it takes for various processes including import and export and business formation procedures. In addition, technological upgrades have reduced the average court length for commercial disputes to 625 days (from 987 days in 2008). Thanks to these improvements, Botswana ranks 71st in the World Bank's Doing Business 2017 ranking.
South Africa South Africa's key industries are automobile manufacturing, tourism, mining and information and communication technologies. South Africa has managed to simplify its import and export procedures, resulting in less time and fewer documents required. In addition, the South African authorities have simplified tax legislation, reducing the number of hours required to prepare tax reports. The World Bank ranked South Africa 74th for ease of doing business in 2017.
Kenya Another country to keep an eye on is Kenya, which is currently making huge investments in sectors such as telecom, transport and energy. With a tech-savvy workforce and high-speed internet, Kenya stands out as one of the top countries in Africa for tech startups, while its diversified economy, strong ownership rights, excellent tourism sector and improving infrastructure make it a great location for general start a new company. If you have further questions about company formation or banking in Africa. Please contact us now.
Know Your Client, also known as KYC, refers to numerous due diligence activities performed not only by financial institutions but also other regulated companies in order to retrieve any relevant information about their clients before and in the course of doing business with them. Every financial and business entity is responsible for adopting and implementing various KYC procedures and regulations.
Collecting and analysing a person's identity information and looking into the real beneficiary of the company and business accounts Name-matching with lists of political parties (searching for Politically Exposed persons or PEPs) Determining a client's likelihood of committing money laundering, terrorist financing, identity theft or other offences Creating expectation profiles based on a client's transactional behaviour, and monitoring any deviations from this profile Anti-money laundering, also known as AML, is a set of laws, regulations and other procedures designed to eliminate the practice of generating income from illegal activity. Typically, money launderers hide the real source of their income through a series of steps that make it look like money derived from illegal activities was earned legitimately. Anti-money laundering policies aim to help institutions spot and look into possible cases.
Globalisation and the global information exchange system KYC and AML policies are designed to offer solutions for eliminating the numerous risks deriving from the fact that financial institutions do not know their clients. On the other hand, these same policies also have a tendency to conflict with a private individual's general expectations of confidentiality and privacy.
With the rapid advance of globalisation over the last few decades, security concerns have become a top priority, not only for national regulators, but for the international community more generally. In response to rising concerns over money laundering, an intergovernmental organisation called the Financial Action Task Force on Money Laundering (FATF) was established in 1989 during the G7 summit in Paris, and shortly afterwards it issued recommendations on money laundering and terrorism financing. All the recommendations are intended to be put into action at a national level through legislation and other legally binding measures. In addition to the Know Your Client and Anti-money laundering procedures described above, FATF recommendations require states to co-operate internationally and exchange relevant information in investigations.
A new international standard, called AEOI or the automatic exchange of information, will come into force in participating countries to ensure that tax authorities exchange data relating to taxpayers' bank accounts. The main goal of AEOI is to make tax evasion impossible. AEOI stipulates that banks must report information about bank and safekeeping accounts to the domestic tax authorities. This information is then exchanged with the tax authorities in AEOI partner countries.
Possible solutions to protect confidentiality Some jurisdictions consider revealing the name of an account holder to be a criminal act. The privacy of a bank's clients is protected by law and regarded as being similar in nature to the confidentiality between doctor and patient or lawyer and client. Although privacy is seen as a fundamental principle and greatly protected in these jurisdictions, law enforcement access can be granted to the relevant information in the context of a criminal investigation.
However, if no criminal accusation has been made, offshore banks offer the maximum possible confidentiality and security. Offshore banking jurisdictions are designed to protect assets from domestic litigation and other civil matters, such as contested estates or divorce. An even higher level of confidentiality and anonymity is available through other asset-holding vehicles — for example, international business companies and offshore trusts.
Another way to increase your privacy is by using a nominee, so that your name does not appear in the company register as the owner of your company (nominee services). However, any bank that requires the beneficiaries of the company to be disclosed would still see your name on the list.
The total population of Malta is 432,089 people. The people of Malta speak English and Maltese. The linguistic diversity of Malta is vaguely diverse according to a fractionation scale, which is 0.0907 for Malta. The average age is around 40.9 years. Life expectancy in Malta is 81 years. The female fertility rate in Malta is 1.4. Around 29% of Malta's population is obese. Ethnic diversity is nearly uniform according to a fractionation scale, which stands at 0.0414 for Malta. Details of the language, religion, age, gender distribution and advancement of the people of Malta can be found in the sections below, as well as the section on education in the country.
Population In Malta, the population density is 1321 people per square kilometer (3437 per square mile). Based on these statistics, this country is considered to be very densely populated. The total population of Malta is 432,089 people. Malta has approximately 41,442 foreign immigrants. Immigrants in Malta make up 0.1 percent of the total number of immigrants worldwide. Immigrants in Malta make up 8 percent of the total number of immigrants in the world. The ethnic diversity of Malta is nearly uniform according to a fractionation scale based on ethnicity. Ethnic fractionation (EF) is concerned with the number, size, socioeconomic distribution, and geographic location of different cultural groups, usually within a state or other defined area. Specific cultural characteristics can refer to language, skin color, religion, ethnicity, customs and traditions, history, or other distinctive criteria, alone or in combination. These characteristics are often used for social exclusion and power monopolization. The index of ethnic fractionation in Malta is 0.0414. This means that the population living in Malta is somewhat fragmented. EF is usually measured as 1 minus the Herfindahl concentration index of ethnolinguistic group proportions, which reflects the probability that two randomly selected individuals from the population belong to different groups. The theoretical maximum of EF of 1 means that each person belongs to a different group. Below are statistics for Malta on average age and gender distribution at different ages.
Old The average age is around 40.9 years. The average age of men is 39.7 years, while the average age of women is 42.1 years.
Gender The sex ratio, or number of males per female (estimated at birth), is 1.06. It can be further broken down into the following categories: sex ratio under 15 – 1.06; sex ratio from 15 to 64 - 1.03; sex ratio over 64 - 0.76; Overall sex ratio - 0.99. The overall sex ratio differs from the sex ratio estimated at birth. This is due to the fact that some newborns are included in the estimated sex ratio at birth, but die within the first few weeks of their lives and are not included in the overall sex ratio.
Religion The majority religion in Malta is Christianity, adherents to which make up 97% of all believers in the country. Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ as set forth in the New Testament. Christianity is the largest religion in the world with over 2.4 billion followers known as Christians. Christians believe that Jesus is the Son of God and the Savior of mankind, whose coming as Christ or Messiah was prophesied in the Old Testament. In addition to Christianity, there are several other religions in the country. Other religions in Malta are Islam and folk religions. The religious diversity of Malta is vaguely diverse according to a fractionation scale based on the number of religions in Malta. The index of religious fractionation in Malta is 0.1223. This value means that within the country there is one major belief with some other minor beliefs.
Austria is considered a large country due to its total area. Its total land area is 83,871 km² (about 32,383 mi²). The continental shelf of Austria is approximately 0 km². Austria is in Europe. Europe is a continent whose borders date back to ancient times. European countries include the United Kingdom, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Malta and the Vatican, among others. Austria has 8 neighboring countries. Its neighbors include the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Liechtenstein, Slovakia, Slovenia and Switzerland. Austria is a landlocked country. The average altitude range of Austria is 910 m (2,986 ft).
Neighbors The total length of land borders of Austria is 2524 kilometers (~975 miles). Austria shares land borders with 8 different countries and has the same number of unique land borders with neighboring territories. If, as in the case of Austria, a country has the same number of distinct neighboring areas as land borders, then that country does not have non-contiguous sections of a land border. This is in contrast to several countries that have multiple non-contiguous stretches of land borders. Austria has 8 neighboring countries. Its neighbors include the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Liechtenstein, Slovakia, Slovenia and Switzerland. The lengths of Austria's national borders with its neighboring countries are as follows:
Czech Republic - 362 km (225 miles), Germany - 784 km (487 mi), Hungary - 366 km (227 mi), Italy - 430 km (267 miles), Liechtenstein - 35 km (22 miles), Slovakia - 91 km (57 mi), Slovenia - 330 km (205 miles), Switzerland - 164 km (102 miles).
Cities The capital of Austria is Vienna. The largest cities in Austria are Vienna, Graz, Linz and Salzburg.
Elevation The average altitude range of Austria is 910 m (2,986 ft). The highest point in Austria is the Großglockner with an official height of 3798 m (12,461 ft). The lowest point in Austria is Lake Neusiedl. It is 115 m (377 ft) above sea level. The difference in altitude between the highest (Großglockner) and lowest (Neusiedlersee) point in Austria is 3683 m (2 ft).
Area The total area of Austria is 83,871 km² (approx. 32,383 mi²). and the total Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) is 0 km² (~0 mi²). The continental shelf of Austria is approximately 0 km². Including landmass and EEZ, the total area of Austria is approx. 83,871 km² (~32,383 mi²). Austria is considered a large country due to its total area.
Forest and farmland 39,600 km² of Austria's territory is covered with forest, and forested areas make up 47% of the country's total area. There are 13,677 km² of arable land in Austria, which accounts for 16% of the country's total area.