If you have set up a company across a border before, you know the drill: apostilles, sworn translations, a work permit for the director, maybe a local nominee to satisfy some rule. A Russian citizen opening a Belarusian LLC can brace for all of that and then find that almost none of it applies. The […]
A foreign technology company that wants a development team in Belarus — to build for the group, or to serve its own Western clients — usually arrives at the idea of a High-Tech Park subsidiary through its tax benefits, and usually with a particular picture in mind: a low-cost entity that bills the parent a […]
A foreign company with a Belarusian supplier or customer lined up and a contract ready to sign usually has a quiet question in the background: how much can it really know about the party on the other side? The reassuring answer is: more than it expects. Belarus has a public company register, a counterparty’s details […]
A foreign investor whose Belarusian company is up and running usually approaches the first hire with a single number in mind: the salary they have agreed with the person they want to employ. It is the natural place to start, and it is also where the budgeting most often goes wrong, because the salary is […]
Choosing the form for a Belarusian company, a foreign founder often feels a pull towards the joint-stock company. It sounds more substantial than a limited liability company — more like a real corporation — and there is a quiet assumption that the more formal vehicle must be the better one. It is worth resisting that […]
Registering a company in Belarus is quick — a matter of a day once the documents are in order — and foreign founders who have just been through it often expect the bank account to follow at the same pace. Then the account takes weeks, and the contrast is jarring enough to feel like something […]
Setting up a company in Belarus is fast, and foreign owners who have done it often assume that closing one will be just as quick — a matter of a decision and a form. It is not. Winding a Belarusian company down is a slower, more exacting process than starting one up, driven by a […]
A Russian founder looking at Belarus usually approaches it with one of two assumptions, and it is worth unsettling both at the start. The first is that Belarus is more or less Russia — a near-identical neighbour where setting up must be trivial and the company will run on familiar rules. The second, more common […]
There comes a point with some companies when the sensible thing is to close them — a venture that did not work out, a subsidiary that has served its purpose, a dormant entity quietly costing more to keep than it returns. For a foreign owner, the tempting course at that point is the quiet one: […]
A foreign parent whose Belarusian High-Technology Park subsidiary has built something valuable — a platform, a codebase, a product — reaches a point where it wants the intellectual property “consolidated at the parent,” usually ahead of a financing round or a sale, and usually in the belief that moving IP inside its own group is […]
A foreign company that has set up in Belarus — through a local subsidiary or another registered entity — or begun selling into it, comes to register its brand expecting a formality — file the mark, pay the fee, receive the certificate — and instead meets a refusal on a ground it never saw coming. […]
