Perspectives from our work.

The business case is not usually the problem. Cost is created by the order in which things are done: a lease signed before the company exists, job offers made before payroll is registered, supply contracts closed before the VAT position is confirmed.

We work back from the planned first day of trading and lock the critical path — company set-up, banking, registrations, premises, people — before anything is committed that cannot be undone cheaply.

Branch, subsidiary, joint venture and distribution set-ups have very different effects on liability, getting profits home, transfer pricing and the ability to sign contracts and employ people locally. The fastest structure to register is often the most expensive to unwind.

The test is not how quickly you can register. It is what the entity has to carry once it holds stock, employs staff, signs multi-year contracts and is reviewed in due diligence.

Onboarding a foreign-owned company takes longer than registering it, and two banks in the same country will ask for different evidence. Ownership structure, source of funds and where the directors live all change the answer.

We prepare the file the way the bank's compliance team will review it, and run the banking process alongside company set-up rather than after it.

A country manager who really knows the market — how business is done, the regulators, where the good people are — shortens the entry curve significantly. The wrong hire costs a trading season, not a notice period.

So we define the role before the profile, recruit against the operating model rather than an org chart, and stay involved through the first operating cycles.

Counsel, accountants, customs agents, landlords and industrial partners are the mechanism by which a new market functions. Selecting them on fee alone is a reliable way to stall a programme.

We instruct advisers we have used before, hold them to a defined scope and timetable, and coordinate them ourselves — so client management is not arbitrating between five advisers in an unfamiliar language and legal system.

An establishment has succeeded when the local entity files on time, pays its people correctly, maintains its permits and closes its books without anyone from the programme in the room.

For that reason the routines, compliance calendar and financial controls are built during implementation, not assembled at the end of it.