5 ms·

No that's not what shelf companies are attractive for. It's all about age and quick access to an incorporated entity, the name barely matters and can easily be

No that's not what shelf companies are attractive for. It's all about age and quick access to an incorporated entity, the name barely matters and can easily be changed on request. Advertising or testing names by using a public company register makes no sense, it's like apple testing the name of their new phone through some public register of a telecom license filing.

gojomo 8y ago
I can believe you, but every online offer of shelf companies I've seen has prominently listed an inventory of actual, available-today companies by name, making me think some buyers don't want to go through the name change. And, one site I just browsed lists as one of the "main reasons" for using a shelf company is "to assist with the sometimes onerous task of designing a new company name". Which actually suggests another theory for the HK name changes: maybe they're a fast/cheap way to instantly reserve a corporate name of interest, which is then later released to whoever really wants it.
- kijin 8y ago
  This sounds like the common practice of squatting on a domain name. People who are good at it don't squat on the same set of names forever; they adjust their portfolios based on what's trendy at the time and let unprofitable names expire. People who peddle shelf corporations might do the same, except they can easily rename their wares. And of course, just like domain names, you can't register more than one corporation with the same name in the same jurisdiction. Whoever owns this company has probably gone through several phases during which they thought there might be heavy demand for names related to Chinese resources, e-healthcare, education, land, and capital management. They also seem to have a procedure in place that reverts an unsold shelf corporation to a placeholder name or internal identifier (Premier Dragon) after a while.
  - baybal2 8y ago
    If they were shelf companies, they would be laying cold, and not conducting commercial operations
    - nicolas_t 8y ago
      Which seems to be the case here, he did say those companies were dormant.
  - Jaruzel 8y ago
    my first UK company was a 'shelf' company. It was already pre-registered with a name ( which I never changed ) and all I had to was sign a document and pay a small fee to take it over. At the time it was WAY faster than starting one from scratch. These days it's just as fast to create a company from scratch as it's all online. My second and third companies were 'from scratch'.
    - guan 8y ago
      The situation in Denmark is the same. Back when pre-registered companies were more common, the Stakemann law firm in Copenhagen had a big share of this market, and Peter Andreas Stakemann is the founder of a large number of Danish companies. This company registry page lists him as connected to 2,000 companies, mostly as founder or initial director. I suspect the system is limiting the displayed list to 2,000 and he is actually connected to tens of thousands of companies. https://datacvr.virk.dk/data/visenhed?enhedstype=person&id=4000448343&soeg=peter%20andreas%20stakemann&type=Alle&language=da https://datacvr.virk.dk/data/visenhed?enhedstype=person&id=4...
- IkmoIkmo 8y ago
  None of what you said explains why you would want to change names every couple months. That would tell you changing names is trivial, commonplace, cheap, frequent. In other words, you can advertise virtually any generic name you do not own yet, and change it as you please the moment a customer wants to buy a particular name. Unless the names are unique, rare and squatted like high value domain names. In this case you want to own the name first before you advertise it. But that doesn't logically correspond to ditching the name every 2 months. Perhaps it is the reason, I can't say for sure, but I'd say it's very unlikely. (My company deals with lots of shelves, or at least used to before incorporation was simplified with new legislation some 10 years ago) Avoiding prying eyes from journalists, creditors or regulators from a dubious venture seems much more likely, though it's a very crude and attention drawing method I certainly wouldn't recommend.
  - gojomo 8y ago
    If you advertised a name that was both desirable to the customer and legally available – but you did not yet reserve it, you'd have the risk of the customer or competitors grabbing the name first. Perhaps changing the name is trivial – for an expert in the jurisdiction's procedures. But a little bothersome for typical out-of-jurisdiction customers. You might thus try a new name so you could advertise it safely, and give customers the one-stop, one-step shipping experience they want. Further, as companies are sold, you might churn names. For example, if a customer bites on a certain name, if they don't want it on exactly the legal-form/age company where it is currently parked, you might transfer it to another company that matches their other needs. If you realize that the style of name they chose is rising in popularity, you might generate a new name of that kind, but then place it on an older company with a name that's been long-passed over. I would expect a deeper analysis of whether any of the short-lived names then moved to other entities (where they perhaps were used for longer periods) to be able to confirm or disprove this speculation.

gojomo 8y ago

I can believe you, but every online offer of shelf companies I've seen has prominently listed an inventory of actual, available-today companies by name, making me think some buyers don't want to go through the name change. And, one site I just browsed lists as one of the "main reasons" for using a shelf company is "to assist with the sometimes onerous task of designing a new company name". Which actually suggests another theory for the HK name changes: maybe they're a fast/cheap way to instantly reserve a corporate name of interest, which is then later released to whoever really wants it.

kijin 8y ago
This sounds like the common practice of squatting on a domain name. People who are good at it don't squat on the same set of names forever; they adjust their portfolios based on what's trendy at the time and let unprofitable names expire. People who peddle shelf corporations might do the same, except they can easily rename their wares. And of course, just like domain names, you can't register more than one corporation with the same name in the same jurisdiction. Whoever owns this company has probably gone through several phases during which they thought there might be heavy demand for names related to Chinese resources, e-healthcare, education, land, and capital management. They also seem to have a procedure in place that reverts an unsold shelf corporation to a placeholder name or internal identifier (Premier Dragon) after a while.
- baybal2 8y ago
  If they were shelf companies, they would be laying cold, and not conducting commercial operations
  - nicolas_t 8y ago
    Which seems to be the case here, he did say those companies were dormant.
- Jaruzel 8y ago
  my first UK company was a 'shelf' company. It was already pre-registered with a name ( which I never changed ) and all I had to was sign a document and pay a small fee to take it over. At the time it was WAY faster than starting one from scratch. These days it's just as fast to create a company from scratch as it's all online. My second and third companies were 'from scratch'.
  - guan 8y ago
    The situation in Denmark is the same. Back when pre-registered companies were more common, the Stakemann law firm in Copenhagen had a big share of this market, and Peter Andreas Stakemann is the founder of a large number of Danish companies. This company registry page lists him as connected to 2,000 companies, mostly as founder or initial director. I suspect the system is limiting the displayed list to 2,000 and he is actually connected to tens of thousands of companies. https://datacvr.virk.dk/data/visenhed?enhedstype=person&id=4000448343&soeg=peter%20andreas%20stakemann&type=Alle&language=da https://datacvr.virk.dk/data/visenhed?enhedstype=person&id=4...
IkmoIkmo 8y ago
None of what you said explains why you would want to change names every couple months. That would tell you changing names is trivial, commonplace, cheap, frequent. In other words, you can advertise virtually any generic name you do not own yet, and change it as you please the moment a customer wants to buy a particular name. Unless the names are unique, rare and squatted like high value domain names. In this case you want to own the name first before you advertise it. But that doesn't logically correspond to ditching the name every 2 months. Perhaps it is the reason, I can't say for sure, but I'd say it's very unlikely. (My company deals with lots of shelves, or at least used to before incorporation was simplified with new legislation some 10 years ago) Avoiding prying eyes from journalists, creditors or regulators from a dubious venture seems much more likely, though it's a very crude and attention drawing method I certainly wouldn't recommend.
- gojomo 8y ago
  If you advertised a name that was both desirable to the customer and legally available – but you did not yet reserve it, you'd have the risk of the customer or competitors grabbing the name first. Perhaps changing the name is trivial – for an expert in the jurisdiction's procedures. But a little bothersome for typical out-of-jurisdiction customers. You might thus try a new name so you could advertise it safely, and give customers the one-stop, one-step shipping experience they want. Further, as companies are sold, you might churn names. For example, if a customer bites on a certain name, if they don't want it on exactly the legal-form/age company where it is currently parked, you might transfer it to another company that matches their other needs. If you realize that the style of name they chose is rising in popularity, you might generate a new name of that kind, but then place it on an older company with a name that's been long-passed over. I would expect a deeper analysis of whether any of the short-lived names then moved to other entities (where they perhaps were used for longer periods) to be able to confirm or disprove this speculation.