Transcript of the above video:

As the title of this video suggests, we are discussing nominee shareholders. The first thing out of the gate to go over is nominee shareholders are actually illegal in Thailand. We have done a number of videos about that topic in the past but the thing to take away, just a rule of thumb, it is not legal to be a nominee in Thailand and you will often hear people use that phrase a lot "oh I well I need a Thai nominee", well that is illegal, you cannot have a Thai nominee in Thailand. 

That being said, there are still issues associated with having a 49/51% shareholder structure on a given Thai Company and people oftentimes will need to do business with a local Thai national. Now the question becomes, is that person a nominee? Did they invest money? Are they actively involved in the running of the business or are they just someone that was put down on paper and you never saw them again? 

More recently, we have seen circumstances, especially in the accounting division where companies we didn't have anything to do with some time ago, were formed up and effectively it is hard not to say that they had kind of a nominee structure because they just signed somebody on to their shareholders list and they can't find them. This can be an issue now because oftentimes there is documentation that needs to be filed with things like the audited financial statement that pertain to all shareholders especially a majority shareholder within a corporate or even a plurality shareholder within a corporate share structure. If you can't find that person because they are a nominee, you are going to have a real problem. There are criminal provisions to the anti-nominee laws here in Thailand and one could find themselves in a situation where they may be held criminally liable if they find themselves either using a nominee or they find themselves to be a nominee, this is something to really take seriously. Again that said, there are ways to structure Thai Companies in such a way that they comply with all relevant laws but it is not something to be cavalier about.