INTERNATIONAL LEGAL & BUSINESS ADVISORY
Structuring business, capital and licences across borders
Legal, tax and operational support for founders, private clients and regulated companies.
Cyprus · EU · United Kingdom · international structures
Where to start
KEY SERVICES
Services built around the outcome
Explore servicesCorporate structuring & M&A
Structures that remain workable through growth, investment and exit.
Tax architecture
Coordinated tax planning for companies, founders and mobile families.
Licensing & regulation
Jurisdiction selection, licensing roadmaps and regulator-ready documentation.
Banking, payments & FinTech
Operational preparation for banks, EMIs, PSPs and payment partners.
Private wealth
Residence, succession, asset protection and family governance.
International operations
Operational presence, compliance and ongoing cross-border support.
HOW WE WORK
From diagnosis to implementation
- 01Confidential briefing
- 02Structure and roadmap
- 03Implementation
- 04Ongoing support
Start with a focused conversation
Tell us what you are building, changing or protecting. We will identify the right first step.
What SK Consult actually does
SK Consult is a Nicosia-based advisory practice that designs, builds and maintains cross-border structures — companies, licences, bank and payment accounts, tax positions, and the operational substance that holds all of it together. The work is led by a practising lawyer rather than a registration agent, and the difference shows up in what happens after incorporation.
Most structures fail at the second stage, not the first. Registering a company is administratively simple almost anywhere. Getting that company through EMI onboarding, keeping it there when the compliance officer re-papers the file eighteen months later, defending its tax residency when two revenue authorities both claim it, and passing an audit without restatements — that is the part that requires judgement.
We build for the second stage from day one. Every structure we deliver is documented so that it can be explained to a bank MLRO, a regulator supervision team, an auditor and a tax inspector from the same file. That principle — due-diligence ready — is what the practice is organised around.
The practice in short
Six things clients engage us to do
Mandates arrive in very different shapes, but almost all of them reduce to one or more of the following. Each links through to a full service page with scope, process, documents and indicative costs.
Build the structure
Jurisdiction selection, incorporation, share and control architecture, group holding design, and the corporate documents that make ownership and decision-making legible to a third party who did not draft them.
Obtain the licence
Licensing strategy and applications across iGaming, financial services, payments and crypto-asset activity: regulator engagement, business plans, AML frameworks, and fit-and-proper files for the proposed officers.
Open and keep the accounts
Bank, EMI and PSP onboarding for corporates and individuals. Provider selection based on genuine appetite for the activity and the jurisdiction, then a file built to survive the compliance review rather than merely to reach it.
Set the tax position
Cross-border structuring, tax residency and permanent-establishment analysis, treaty access, withholding, transfer pricing documentation, and personal tax planning for owners and their families.
Create genuine substance
Office, staff, directors, management presence and decision records in the jurisdiction of tax residency. Substance that exists on inspection, because a structure that exists only on paper no longer survives contact with a bank.
Keep it running
Ongoing legal and compliance support, accounting and audit, annual filings, beneficial-ownership registrations, and periodic review as the rules and the business both move.
How an engagement works
The method matters as much as the outcome. Four things stay constant across every mandate.
One point of accountability
You deal with the lawyer who scoped the matter, not with a queue. Registered agents, auditors, licensed fiduciaries and local counsel are engaged where the law requires it and coordinated by us. You are not handed a list of vendors and left to project-manage them.
Written scope before work starts
Every mandate opens with a written scope, a fee and a sequence. If the analysis changes what is sensible, we say so in writing before spending the budget on the previous plan.
Compliance-first, not compliance-later
We decline structures we would be unable to defend. That is not caution for its own sake: a structure that cannot be explained to a bank is a structure without a bank account, and a structure without a bank account is not a structure.
Decisions on the record
Board minutes, ownership rationale, transfer pricing files, source-of-funds narratives and substance evidence are produced as the work happens — not reconstructed two years later under an information request.
Typical mandates
A representative sample of what actually crosses the desk.
- A payment business choosing between its own EU licence, an agent model, and a partnership with an existing licence holder.
- An operating group whose EMI has served notice and which needs replacement banking without signalling distress to the market.
- A crypto-asset service provider working out what the close of the MiCA transitional period on 1 July 2026 means for permissions it already relies on.
- A Cyprus company modelling the move from 12.5 to 15 per cent corporate income tax, the 5 per cent SDC rate on dividends, and the abolition of deemed dividend distribution.
- A founder relocating to Cyprus and testing whether the 60-day or the 183-day residency route, combined with non-dom status, actually works for their income mix.
- A group that needs real substance in its holding jurisdiction after a revenue authority challenged place of effective management.
- An iGaming operator sequencing licence applications across several regulators without creating representations that contradict each other.
- A shareholder who needs commercial privacy from a counterparty while remaining fully disclosed to the register, the bank and the regulator.
Direct answers
Are you a law firm or a corporate services provider?
SK Consult is an advisory practice led by a practising lawyer. Where a mandate requires a licensed administrative service provider, a regulated fiduciary, a statutory auditor, or counsel admitted in another jurisdiction, that role is performed by an appropriately licensed firm engaged for the purpose. We remain your single point of accountability across the structure as a whole.
Do you register companies offshore?
We incorporate wherever the analysis points, classic offshore jurisdictions included. What we do not do is default to offshore. The binding constraint stopped being incorporation years ago and became banking — and a jurisdiction that cannot be banked is not a saving.
How long does this take?
Formation is usually days to a few weeks. Banking and payment onboarding runs from weeks to months and is normally the item that sets the real timeline. Licensing ranges from several months to well beyond a year depending on the regulator. Indicative timelines per jurisdiction go into the written scope and are updated when a regulator queue moves.
How are fees set?
Fixed fees for defined work — a formation, an application, an opinion, a documentation set. Retainers for continuing legal and compliance support. Government, regulator, registered-agent and audit fees are passed through at cost and identified separately. You have the number before the work starts.
Will you tell me if my plan is wrong?
Yes, and in writing. A meaningful share of first meetings end with a different structure from the one the client arrived with. Finding that out in the scoping call costs a conversation; finding it out during a regulator review can cost the licence.
Which languages do you work in?
English, Russian and Ukrainian — in correspondence, documents and meetings. Filings and regulator correspondence are prepared in the official language of the jurisdiction concerned.
Where clients usually start
This page describes the practice and the general regulatory position as at July 2026. It is general information, not legal or tax advice, and it does not create a lawyer-client relationship. Rules change and outcomes turn on facts — speak to us before acting.
