British Virgin Islands: Charges, Mortgages, Indemnities

What are the typical structures available for financing the purchase of an aircraft? The British Virgin Islands (BVI) offers a flexible regime for aircraft financing structures.

In the British Virgin Islands, a ship mortgage is recognized as a charge or encumbrance attached to a vessel as security, guaranteeing the ship owner's obligations as mortgagor...

The most common corporate structure used for financing the purchase of an aircraft involves the incorporation of a special-purpose vehicle ("SPV") to hold title to the aircraft being financed.

Security over the shares of a BVI company will typically be either by way of mortgage (which may be legal, although usually equitable) or charge.

Following execution of the security document(s), the secured party will want to ensure that particulars of the security are filed with the Registrar of Corporate Affairs in the British Virgin Islands (the "Registrar").

The British Virgin Islands ("BVI") is a leading international finance centre and BVI companies are a very frequent feature of offshore finance transactions.

Since its enactment 20 years ago, the BVI’s International Business Companies Act (Cap. 291) (the "IBC Act") has become one of the most widely-used corporate statutes with over six hundred thousand IBCs incorporated under it. Notwithstanding such phenomenal success, practitioners and users have for some time been calling for amendments to the IBC Act as well as for an additional and more flexible range of corporate vehicles, and its twentieth anniversary marked an appropriate occasion f

Harneys has recently acted for a client in a successful court approved arrangement under section 82 of the International Business Companies Act (Cap. 291) (the "Act"). Importantly the arrangement offered significant benefits to a client with a complex corporate transaction that it wished to put in place. The primary benefit in this case was the ability to seek exemption of exchanged securities from registration under the US Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "Securities Act&q