One more Investment Visa Thread :-P

[ozbuckley]

Hi everyone,

After reading around on past threads I've come across certain themes that popped up consistently when it comes to getting an Investment Visa successfully processed. Messages like:

'a significant contribution to Hong Kong', 'What you have to consider is what your giving back to Hong Kong', 'supply jobs, have funding, good business plan', etc.

I want you to give a brief background on my business intentions and hopefully receive feedback on whats going to work for me and whats i need to improve on so I can tweak my application before sumbitting it.

CONTRIBUTING TO HK ECONOMY

I plan on registering a business to help people with a communication impediment by running 3-day intensive courses. The organisation the business will be acting for is already worldwide except for Asia. The programme relies on returning graduates to come back voluntarily and all do because 1. it helps their own progress, and 2. they love helping others with the same problem. Personally, I have 8 years experience within the programme as a coach and course instructor.

There are some paid roles (e.g. coaching and instructing) but they are not well-paid at all.

Where we would be giving back to HK and contributing to HK financially is attracting people from all around Asia to travel to HK. We expect to get to the point where we are running a 3-day course at least once a month with around 40+ people attending each course.

We are also learning Mandarin to also be able to run courses to non-English speaking Chinese in the future which will increase our market even further.

Also, I could also show the potential of local HK people stimulating the economy after becoming a graduate on the programme. I can supply real case study evidence of graduates who have created their own company, are employing people to work for them, and are a success could be very influential to HK officials. These examples are of people who would never of imagined doing anything of a sort before joining the programme.

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FUNDING

The inventer/owner of the programme will help out with providing evidence that he will provide funding to the business here to allow it to flourish.

Start up costs are low.

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My questions:

1. How highly valued would HK officials view bringing in foreign people into the country for attending the courses (aka 'doing business'). I expect a portion of these people who come to HK would stay for a few days before or after the course to do sight seeing.

2. How much information do you need to show for employeeing workers in the business? Do you need to show the salary they would be on?

3. Is the funding coming from the owner of the programme a sufficient source?

4. Will proof of the programmes success in other countries be of substantial influence?


Any thoughts, questions and comments welcome.

Thanks

Oz

[Fiona in HKG]

Sounds similar to LEC stuff.

There are some people on here who can offer advice on investment visas, but reading through what you have, it doesn't strike me as being a particularly strong business case for you to get an investment visa. It sounds more like you'd be an employee of the investor?

[Khema]

#2. Yes, you would need to show salary, job descriptions and qualification requirements, dates when you plan to hire them - and don't forget to include these new hires in the business case/financial plan.

Playing a devil's advocate, I'd say: this is a good business partner for Hong Kong overall, but you don't really need to set up a company and run it from HERE to bring benefits to Hong Kong - many companies just come to HK to run workshops without being actually based here. (Not talking about millions of turists who visit HK every year - what's new here in bringing more visitors?)

Hiring locals, teaching them new skills and engaging local business partners for provision of goods and services is where the benefit to local economy will come from. If your programme is based on graduates to come and teach new students, I don't see a strong case for hiring locals unless they are your programme's graduates - but in this case you don't really 'hire' them (like a payroll staff with benefits and MPF), you invite them to contribute to your workshops on a case by case basis.

[jimbo]

You're not meant to take courses whilst here on a visitor visa.

So that's another hurdle.

[sburnham5]

Hi Oz,

I am also in the midst of putting together an investment visa application and have been asking some similar types of questions.

Have you been in touch with anyone from InvestHK yet? It's a government organization that gives free advice on doing business in Hong Kong. You could start by sending a message to Edith Wong, and she can forward your query to the person with the right knowledge ([email protected]).

To answer some of your questions:

2. The application requires that you reveal full details of compensation and benefits for your employees. This can be stock options and non-capital forms of compensation as well as salary. I've been told that the important thing is to be sure that there is a precedent amongst similar types of companies for the reason you are compensating people in the way you are.

3. The main concern the government has when evaluating the application is if the business is set up in a way that will be sustainable. If you show that capital infusion from the owner is enough to secure the company's viability in the course of business over the next several years, that is a sufficient source. You are not required to have outside funding, and from what I've been told by government agencies, is that the application readers look for investment by the owner/applicant to show their commitment to the project.

Feel free to be in touch, [email protected].

Sarah