Swiss Trusts

Swiss Trust Company Confidential Registered Shares

Normal ownership of a company offers limited opportunities for protecting your anonymity. More often than not, you’ll find yourself jumping through the hoops, adding multiple layers of ownership and operating behind a series of shell entities just to throw your competition and oversight agencies off the trail.

The problem is that the identity of the owner of a set of shares is usually a matter of public record – anyone with Internet at their fingertips can quickly and effortlessly figure out who’s behind this company or that, blowing away whatever elaborate façade you’ve spent money and effort on constructing.

This is why share certificates for all Swiss trust companies offered by First Fidelity Trust AG are issued solely in confidential registered form. These shares leave no paper trail. There is absolutely no public-record made when ownership of confidential registered shares is changed or transferred. Most importantly, at no point in time will your identity ever be publicly listed as the owner of these shares – enabling you to conduct business operations in complete anonymity and with full discretion.

Imagine the following scenario – as the owner of an asset management business, you wish to ensure that your competition keeps its nose out of who really owns the company. With a normal entity, your secrecy would be busted within seconds – in other words, exactly as long as it takes to type the name of your company into Google.

In contrast, a Swiss trust company owned through confidential registered shares allows for complete protection of your identity. The only public record available will be of First Fidelity Trust AG as the administrative agency that provided the company and the bank(s) where the accounts of the Trust Company are being held – who really owns the business will never be publicly disclosed! This means that you can continue doing business while remaining completely anonymous, ensuring that at all times you remain protected not only from oversight and monitoring, but also from any possible legal action – all while giving you complete freedom to conduct business in any manner you see fit.

Swiss Trust Company Corporate Structure

The business vehicle also known as Trust Company has been created in Switzerland as so called ‘safe haven’ to assist its beneficiaries in protection and preservation of their entrusted assets as well as to shield the identities and interests of the shareholders from the piercing eye of governments and tax enforcement agencies worldwide.

The concept of asset protection and preservation via the means of a Swiss Trust Company came to live parallel with the tradition of Swiss private banking which begun in Geneva, Switzerland in the 1800s. The idea of Swiss banking itself dates back at least to revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685).

Swiss banking and trust law is especially strict on any breach of confidentiality. In 1934, a special section was added to the Swiss banking Act in order to protect the accounts of Germans, especially German Jews from the invigilating forces of the Nazi Germany and ultimate confiscation of assets. This provision of the law made it a criminal offense for a bank, or any financial institution like a Trust Company including their employees to improperly divulge any confidential information.

What is fundamentally essential to stress here is the fact that this law has been interpreted, both in practice and by the courts, to prohibit even official requests of foreign governments as to disclosure of information on any clients or individuals maintaining their accounts with Swiss banking and/or financial institutions. Financial institutions including banks & Trust Companies cannot even confirm the existence of an account without a written instruction from beneficiaries or a FINMA explicit ruling (only applicable in cases of a criminal investigation against the entity).

Typically all bank & Trust employees must sign the secrecy portion of the Banking Act as a condition of employment. Both the individuals involved and the institutions themselves are prosecuted if a lapse is discovered. As a result of such stringent execution of the prevailing law these so called ‘lapses’ are virtually non-existent.

As a result the business vehicle known as Swiss Trust Company represents a buffer zone for any of its owners, virtually impenetrable to any government body or enforcement agency. The Trust Company can therefore, without hesitation be called ‘the world’s safest business vehicle’. Assets deposited within the Trust will maintain their securely preserved status long after their initial beneficiaries have passed away.

Lastly, please be advised that all Swiss Trust Companies offered by First Fidelity Trust are fully compliant will all the stringent regulations and standards of the Swiss legislation including the Secrecy Act of 1934. Swiss Trusts are proud to maintain their record of never having had an incident of unauthorized disclosure.