Establishing HK Business and Visa Question

[gujai]

I work for a large US retail company who will send me (and my family) to Hong Kong for a period of two to three years. We currently do not have a business entity in Hong Kong. My question is, how long does it typically take for a foreign company to establish a presence in Hong Kong and once established, how long will it take to establish employment and dependent visas for a family? What type of entity would we need to establish in order to sponsor me as an employee in Hong Kong? Since we do not have a physical entity yet, is it a requirement of the HK government that we have a physical office location or is it possible to setup the location as a home office?

Thanks for your help.

[shri]

You might want to start by contacting InvestHK. They can often act as a one stop advice house for companies and investors moving to Hong Kong. Their advice and contacts are spot on, in most cases (given that its a govt entity).

www.investhk.gov.hk

Company setup - Buy a shelf company & apply for name change - 1 day. Best left for your legal department to do, as there can be several trademark, tax and structuring issues to deal with when it comes to large corporations.

Visas - Once setup and a business plan is in place, it usually takes 4 to 6 weeks to get the visa paper work. Again, best left to your legal department or HR to deal with.

There are companies who will do the whole company setup and visa application in one shot.

For the initial setup, I'd imagine that the govt will not be too fussy, as you surely cannot get a physical office until your company is up and running and you're in HK working to find a physical office.

[Claire ex-ax]

A good first place to contact is InvestHK (a government entity) which helps businesses to set up in Hong Kong. Much information is on the website and it can walk you through the whole process.

InvestHK Home Page