Immigration - Building businesses

[pcsrvc]

Hi all.

I have been reading a lot of topics lately and beforehand I want to give praise to all the volunteers who dedicate their time to helping other people achieve their dreams in this forum, you are the best people, thank you.

Here is a brief description of my current situation, plan and doubts:

35 yo male, 33.33% owner of a consulting business in São Paulo, Brazil. I provide foreign companies with consulting services on managing a business in Brazil during the initial steps and also consulting on general business aspects. We have been in business for 6 years now and have been successful thus far. I have managed several types of businesses, including tech startups, manufacturing businesses, IT resellers, etc. I have not graduated from college although I have completed 2 years Engineering with one-year internship and 2 years law school with related corporate law experience for 6 years even though I am not an attorney.

Plan:

Immigrate to the UK has been my dream for the last 15 years and only now I have a window of opportunity since I do not descend from Europeans in a degree that would allow me to apply for an EU visa. The window of opportunity includes two main routes:

i. Immigrating through a Sole Representative of an Overseas business: considering the current business I have helps foreign companies, I could use the UK as an European operations base to reach all EU markets. This would require some convincing to do with my partners as well as my company maturing a little bit more to support the expenses of having me in Europe driving the sales efforts. This might take up to 5 years to materialize, so this is a long shot considering Brexit and all the regulation changes that may happen until then.

ii. Immigrating through T1 Entrepreneur route: in general, I would be able to come up with enough funds to start a franchise (safer though less profitable business from my experience). This is a very straight forward process to me since the chose franchisor would be one to fill in all the gaps I have due to being an immigrant in terms of market knowledge, product adequacy, marketing, etc etc etc. and would provide me a long time to learn the technical part of the business from experience.

Doubts:

i. Even though I have a lot of management experience, a franchise (cafe/food are the primary targets) would present a challenge since I have never had any experience with those sectors. In your experience, how impacting is this lack of experience in the specific business sector in terms of the interviews, etc.?

ii. Formal educational background: As I said, I have not graduated from college even though I have plenty of official, government-issued documents evidencing that I have managed at least 5/6 companies over the last 6 years. Some companies were under my management simultaneously. Are there any issues with the lack of formal educational background?

iii. Re the £200k investment:

a. Is reinvesting an option for reaching the £ 200k? Say I come up with £ 100k, start one franchise business (let's say e Nero's or any other big name franchisor), make £ 66k in the first two years, reinvest the £ 66k to start a new branch and invest another £ 40k in the third year. All that creating say 5 to 10 jobs when the venture is 3 years old. I would have invested £ 100k of "new" money brought from Brazil and reinvested £ 110k of profits from the business itself. Is this logic acceptable from a T1E visa point of view?

b. I may partner-up with a British citizen. Shareholding positions would be 75% for myself and 25% for my partner. Funds would be in the company's account and would be used to start the business. Would this be acceptable?

c. Given my knowledge of the Brazilian market, I may conduct sales rep services or import and resale business in the UK with products such as Brazilian nuts, for example. Are there any issues with that visa-wise? I may start several different companies to conduct such businesses if required, i.e. Brazilian xxxxxxxx Ltd., Brazilian yyyyyyyy Ltd., Brazilian zzzzzzzzzzzzzz Ltd., Hire-aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Ltd., Probbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb etc. Such ventures may receive investment as required as well as the creation of jobs should they require. Does investment and job creation across businesses count towards the £ 200k?

Very sorry for the book-like post. Any help will be much appreciated.

Cheers.

[zimba]

First of all this is an immigration forum so we cannot provide much business planning or business related advice. UKVI has its own internal procedures to determine what is a good business plan and who is a genuine entrepreneur. Rules are not clear cut on these issues so it is all up to UKVI

a. Is reinvesting an option for reaching the £ 200k? Say I come up with £ 100k, start one franchise business (let's say e Nero's or any other big name franchisor), make £ 66k in the first two years, reinvest the £ 66k to start a new branch and invest another £ 40k in the third year. All that creating say 5 to 10 jobs when the venture is 3 years old. I would have invested £ 100k of "new" money brought from Brazil and reinvested £ 110k of profits from the business itself. Is this logic acceptable from a T1E visa point of view?

No. You must have access to at least 200K or else you cannot get visa. You cannot also count revenue generated as investment

b. I may partner-up with a British citizen. Shareholding positions would be 75% for myself and 25% for my partner. Funds would be in the company's account and would be used to start the business. Would this be acceptable?

No restrictions however you still need to invest 200K personally, either loaning the company 200K or 200K worth of shares (which you are a director)

c. Given my knowledge of the Brazilian market, I may conduct sales rep services or import and resale business in the UK with products such as Brazilian nuts, for example. Are there any issues with that visa-wise? I may start several different companies to conduct such businesses if required, i.e. Brazilian xxxxxxxx Ltd., Brazilian yyyyyyyy Ltd., Brazilian zzzzzzzzzzzzzz Ltd., Hire-aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa Ltd., Probbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb etc. Such ventures may receive investment as required as well as the creation of jobs should they require. Does investment and job creation across businesses count towards the £ 200k?

No issues. You can claim investment/job creation across multiple businesses which you are a director

[pcsrvc]

Thank you, Zimba.