The office, on South Street near Park Lane in Mayfair, will help OIL to further support its Asia-based corporate clients, which it says “increasingly require international structures” to help them with their capital flows to Europe.
It will also allow OIL to reach out to new, Europe-based clients, OIL said in a statement this morning.
The types of services the company might handle for its clients are understood to include arranging structures that hold assets, on behalf of individuals or businesses, in a range of jurisdictions. Such assets might include properties, business assets, alternative assets such as art or antiques, or such property as yachts or private jets.
As reported here in March, OIL, which was founded in Hong Kong in 1986, was acquired by IK Investment Partners (IKIP), a London-based private equity firm with offices in Europe and Scandinavia, from the Carlyle Group. IKIP is also a major shareholder in Vistra, the Geneva-based corporate services provider.
Oil has more than 200 employees across Hong Kong, Singapore, China and Taiwan, and specialises helping companies in these markets set up in such offshore jurisdictions as Anguilla, the Bahamas, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Delaware, Mauritius, Samoa and the Seychelles.
OIL CEO Martin Crawford pointed to the fact that more than 50% of new properties in London are currently being purchased by Asian investors as evidence of the appetite in that part of the world for investing in Europe.
Heading up the new OIL office as director for business development will be Tim Edwards, who was formerly involved in business development at Equity Trust, where he focused on the UK and Channel Islands markets.
