Protected cell companies in Malta

Abstract

Protected Cell Companies are flexible financial vehicles that can be used creatively to address the financing of a broad spectrum of risks. The purpose of this thesis is to expose the necessary legal considerations that could affect protected cell companies in Malta. As a protected cell company is a relatively new legal concept its exposure to number of legal issues has not been widely discussed. The impact of such issues upon the protected cell company itself and upon persons concerned with it will undoubtedly determine and define its development. This thesis seeks to analyse traditional established law concepts which could be challenged by the very nature of the protected cell company. An evaluation of the impact of protected cell company legislation is also described. In this thesis Malta's protected cell company legislation is utilised as model when contrasting cell company legislation with traditional legal concepts. There are few variants between the protected cell company legislation in the various jurisdictions and Malta, however, where differences exist, these have been highlighted. The United Kingdom was also utilised to highlight the impact of protected cell companies upon a jurisdiction with no conceivable notion of cell company legislation. Although this thesis has been limited to protected cell companies in Malta similar concepts attaching specific assets to specific liabilities exist in various jurisdictions. However, offering an analysis and evaluation of all these concepts would have resulted in too broad a study, which would have detracted from the scope of this thesis. As this thesis focuses on the necessary legal considerations concerning a protected cell company in Malta, secondary authorities assume importance in establishing the legal principles and concepts to which protected cell companies can be compared. This serves mainly to attempt a definition of a protected cell company and to expose certain legal issues arising from the nature of the protected cell company. Correspondence was carried out with persons in the field in order to establish opinions, and to offer ideas. In this thesis I propose to move beyond the current literature by offering a complete analysis, evaluation and critique of Malta's protected cell company legislation. Attention is also drawn to the specific legal issues regarding recognition of a cell structure and insolvency proceedings, therefore a more complete study is presented.