We advise on and structure companies, LLPs and partnerships. Our work covers the expression of interest business case, constitutions, shareholders' agreements, advice on the resident director and registered office, board governance, mergers and acquisitions, branch and representative office registration, and the transfer of an existing company into GMC.

We take banks, payment firms, asset managers, insurers and fintech companies from the first meeting with the Gelephu Financial Services Office through In-Principle Approval to licence issue under the Financial Services Act 2025 and the GEN Rulebook. That includes the regulatory business plan, Approved Person applications, capital and prudential requirements, the accelerated review pathway for firms licensed in an established financial centre, changes of control and the supervisory relationship after launch.

Virtual assets are written into the Financial Services Act 2025, and we advise exchanges, custodians, stablecoin issuers, tokenisation platforms, protocol founders, miners and treasury companies on where their model sits and how it is licensed. We deliver perimeter and token classification opinions, MTF, OTF, custody and fiat-referenced token permissions, real-world asset tokenisation structures, Web3 group structuring and the banking that goes with them. Our lawyers have incorporated and structured a virtual asset service provider and advised on the redomiciliation of a global exchange.

We form funds and variable capital companies under the Fund Rulebook, license or recognise their managers, including the four-week no-objection route for managers from a Recognised Foreign Jurisdiction, and set up single and multi-family offices under the 2026 guidelines. For families and founders we build trusts under the received common law and equity, succession and asset protection structures, and apply for the fund, family office and manager exemptions under the Income Tax Act 2025.

GMC taxes companies at 15%, non-citizen individuals at 0% to 31 December 2030, and levies no capital gains tax and no withholding on dividends. We structure around that regime: founders company and strategic and development company approvals, the fund and family office exemptions, withholding on cross-border payments, the Bhutan and Singapore double taxation agreement, and advance rulings under section 108 that fix the treatment of a transaction before it is signed.

For investors entering one of GMC's eight priority industries we advise on the whole entry as one sequence: the expression of interest, entity choice, incorporation, any GFSO licence, the DK Bank account, long-term land leases through the Economic Development Group, work passes and the tax approvals, with scope, fees and dates fixed in writing before the first filing. Groups that already have a company elsewhere can redomicile it into GMC with its history intact.

We prepare employment contracts and policies under the Employment Act 2025, obtain Employment Passes and Dependant Passes under the Employment of Foreign Workforce Act 2025, keep the employer's register of foreign employees inspection-ready, and advise on the Digital Nomad Visa programme and residency routes for founders, executives and their families. Where a pass is refused, suspended or revoked, we represent the employer before the designated officer.

Land in GMC is held on long-term lease from the Authority through the Economic Development Group. We negotiate the lease and the site clearances, and document the projects built on it: hydropower-backed data centres and compute facilities, green energy and manufacturing plants, hospitality and wellness developments, and the construction, supply and operating contracts under the Sale of Goods Act 2026 and the Unfair Contract Terms Act 2026.

We advise technology companies on the contracts that carry their products: software licensing, SaaS and platform terms, outsourcing and cloud agreements, data protection and cross-border data flows, and the ownership and licensing of intellectual property across a group. For fintech and digital asset businesses we align the technology stack with the licence conditions so that what the regulator approved is what the code does.

Insurers and reinsurers are licensed by GFSO under the Financial Services Act 2025, and aviation and logistics operators enter GMC through the Gelephu International Airport corridor and the Customs Act 2025. We handle the licences, the operating and concession agreements, the customs registrations and the cross-border contracts that each sector needs, together with the employment and land work that comes with them.

We build the compliance programmes GFSO expects of a licensed firm: customer due diligence, transaction monitoring, sanctions screening, beneficial ownership records, governance and reporting, and we provide outsourced compliance officer, money laundering reporting officer and Approved Person capacity where a firm needs it. We keep licensed firms current as the Acts, rulebooks and guidance change.

We handle commercial disputes before the GMC courts, arbitration seated in or connected to GMC, early case assessment and settlement, and the regulatory side: GFSO investigations, enforcement proceedings, sanctions matters, work pass appeals and internal investigations for boards. We deal with the most sensitive and the most serious legal issues our clients face, and we say at the outset what the exposure is and what it will take to resolve it.