We have more than 26 years experience serving more than 1000+ SMEs
We are a service provider on the EDB Connections Concierge
With digitisation, the world is not only a smaller place but the cost of expanding your businesses globally has reduced significantly. Technology has now democratised global reach for SMEs. What was once only achieved by MNCs can now be attained by the SMEs. What are you waiting for?
As a team of lawyers with a worldwide view, we can support you in your business expansion. Here are just a few scenarios we have show cased.
Big businesses use advisors from global professional firms to work out the best legal, financial, operational, human resource and marketing elements for them so they benefit from all the world has to offer.
Big businesses now operate specific functions from the best location to their advantage, knowing they can control these various functions seamlessly.
With the advent of the digital revolution, choosing the corporate, finance and human resource laws that best benefit your business is a no-brainer for those that want to achieve maximum growth and achieve their wealth ambitions.
Technology isn’t the starting point; the tech is all possible. Fundamentally businesses need a robust structure and a clear set of rules to control and coordinate business activity.
A Japanese Education Group was planning a swift expansion across Asia. The Business Development Director responsible for delivering this in the company’s journey wisely wanted to understand the best legal and tax structure for their group.
The business was also suffering from their own success, with Centre Managers using different forms across the business, not only causing confusion in the documents for the head office, but also making it extremely difficult to maintain consistency in the documents versions. The Director recognised this as a business risk which may lead to potential disputes between internal stakeholders and external parties.
With cost being an issue and no full-time in house legal counsel at hand they were looking for a different approach.
In keeping things PLAIN and SIMPLE, our international team of lawyers understood the client’s business growth plans, the business vision and the risks. We were able to advise the best legal and tax structures to support the planned expansion.
Next the team collated and reviewed all the forms and agreements, uploading standardised documents to VanillaLaw Docs, an easy to use portal which helps the HQ in Japan to control forms and ensure the Centre Managers always use the correct documentations, making their lives easier and most importantly, protecting the business now and throughout the expansion. Our client now has access to the VanillaLaw® team with no overhead costs of maintaining expensive in-house lawyers. Instead they can contact their dedicated legal team anywhere, anytime, consulting with us either in person and online.
We’re delighted they have also joined GoSME®, a mobile B2B business marketplace, benefiting from networking with other business owners, searching out potential deals and connecting up with like minded businesses.
Another success story from VanillaLaw®; keeping it PLAIN & SIMPLE. We change the way law firms help SMEs grow.
An entrepreneur and British citizen owned the license to import and distribute a well-known brand of British sports car in China. The license agreement was governed under English Law, with any disputes to be arbitrated in the London Courts of International Arbitration (LCIA).
Unfortunately, a dispute did arose and the matter is now the subject of arbitration at LCIA. To protect his business, the client needed to find lawyers well versed in Singapore and UK laws who could work with a limited budget. ADR was recommended by team Vanillalaw, instead of litigating in the UK Courts.
Singapore is part of the Commonwealth comprising of 54 countries working together (amongst other matters) for business growth. It is home to 2.4 billion people [https://thecommonwealth.org/]. This leads to the choice of law issue. Singapore and UK share the same DNA in common law.
Therefore, in the area of commercial dispute resolution, it allows for businesses (wherever they are located) to seize alternative dispute resolution methods in the form of mediation or arbitration and to use either Singapore or English law.
Our client, being British, decided to commence arbitration action in the London Courts of International Arbitration [LCIA} with English law as the choice of law. He then appointed team VanillaLaw® to lead the arbitration proceedings and this has helped saved him significant legal fees.
Using technology to sift and capture information from tons of documents and letters, our lawyers and paralegals got to work finding the evidence to put together the case theory, which has now been reviewed by the seniors and filed to LCIA.
Unlike most other law firms, our client’s case theory is not merely a “framework” without “the flesh”, they have a robust case theory. With the heavy lifting work being outsourced to Singapore and splitting the work out to a junior team supervised by the said team of lawyers, who are cross trained in both English and Singapore law, the client has a better peace of mind, with the best response being put forward to protect their business without stretching their budget.
A high-tech Canadian manufacturer with customers across Canada and the USA wanted to reduce the cost of manufacturing and was therefore, looking to relocate to Asia.
The main business concerns were theft of intellectual property rights (IPR), a trustworthy labour force, human resource who are fluent in English, familiar laws based on common law, a reliable dispute resolution centre and of course an attractive tax regime.
On a personal level, the client also wanted to get access to good schools for his children and exposure to a growing Asian market to further expand his business and secure his legacy.
Singapore was the obvious answer!
The answer was plain and simple, Singapore ticked all the boxes, addressing all of the client’s needs, with the correct IP rights protection in place from the VanillaLaw® Team, protecting the business whilst enabling reduced costs and a great platform for growth.
Advising on re-domiciliation, how to do this and most importantly making it happen was made easy by the VanillaLaw® Team who are proud to support this company not just for this case, but have been doing so for more than 26 years.
A Singaporean shipping company operating all over the Asia-Pacific regions had grown organically, resulting in having no less than 5 different companies spread around the region.
The owner was finding it diffcult to keep track of all the compliance issues, tax and contract risks. To make matters worse, they had no in-house legal team to assist them, but knew they needed to do a one time restructuring exercise that could take between 8 to 12 months to complete.
Concerned about the cost of hiring a senior in-house lawyer to do this work, he was looking for a simple solution to get his business back on track and ready for the next phase of growth.
Team VanillaLaw® provided an outsourced legal and business solution. This helped save time and money because the business owners did not have to pay for lengthy meetings and discussions between different advisors – just a straightforward solution implemented efficiently by the team who were on the same page as the business owners.
Using VanillaLaw® Docs to prepare relevant standardised contracts to support the streamlined business vision, we set to work resolving all the compliance, contracts and restructuring issues where necessary, resulting in a more commercially efficient business operation.
Rather than hiring one lawyer to work at different levels and across different disciplines which could have been slow and could have led to other problems, the team at VanillaLaw® simply assigned the right people to each task – we completed the project in half the time and at half the expected budget. Another happy client!
Whilst giving clients access to expert advisors and lawyers, we keep costs down with our VanillaLaw® Docs portal of plain English standardised legal templates, which can effectively be personalised to meet your business and contract needs. So, once we’ve worked out the best strategy with you, implementation is quick and competitively priced.
Whilst giving clients access to expert advisors and lawyers, we keep costs down with our VanillaLaw® Docs portal of plain English standardised legal templates, which can effectively be personalised to meet your business and contract needs. So, once we’ve worked out the best strategy with you, implementation is quick and competitively priced.