shell company

English

Noun

shell company (plural shell companies)

1. (law, business) A company that engages in no substantive business activities, but instead exists as a vehicle for legal or financial transactions, typically to shield another party from liability or other issues.

   Synonyms: shell corporation, letterbox company, mailbox company, front company

   • 2003 November 15, Tony Levene, “Capital letters”, in The Guardian‎^[1]:

     It was a shell company and, the SEC alleges, never had researchers, research plans or any scientific resources.

   • 2018, Oliver Bullough, chapter 2, in Moneyland, Profile Books, →ISBN, page 19:

     This luxury-loving and profligate shell company is registered at a betting shop on the Caledonian Road, an unlovely thoroughfare in North London on which you'd be more likely to find amphetamines than a top-notch lawyer.

Related terms

• shell game

Translations

company without activity created for tax purposes

• Danish: skuffeselskab n
• Dutch: brievenbusfirma (nl) f, brievenbusmaatschappij (nl) f
• Finnish: peiteyhtiö, peiteyritys, peitefirma
• French: société écran (fr) f
• German: Briefkastenfirma (de) f, Briefkastengesellschaft f, Domizilgesellschaft f (Switzerland)
• Japanese: ペーパーカンパニー (ja) (pēpā kanpanī)
• Norwegian:

  Bokmål: postkasseselskap (no) n

• Polish: spółka wydmuszka f
• Spanish: empresa fantasma f
• Swedish: skalbolag (sv) n

See also

• ghost company

Further reading

• shell corporation on Wikipedia.Wikipedia
• John Smullen, Nicholas Hand, editors (2005), “shell company”, in A Dictionary of Finance and Banking, 3rd edition, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 375
• “shell company”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.