It may seems a bit strange as a consulting company to openly say thank you to our bank, but after 4 years of banking with Barclays Wealth, I will never go back to another bank for a UK business. Céondo Ltd, even so it is based in UK, is managed a bit differently than the standard company.
As I am French, moving from one country to another on a semi regular basis, I needed a way to have a company with a stable address. My choices were simple :
- France as I am French;
- Germany as I was living in Germany at that time;
- UK because I already created a UK limited back in 2000.
France was ruled out pretty fast, basically you need to travel every single day of the year to some kind of authorities to get some paper work done. Running a French company from outside France is a recipe for disaster. Germany, with the traditional GmbH was also ruled out, you need to live in Germany to setup one without too many problems, but the main problem is that if you are defacto sole manager of the company and if a patent troll hits you, your company is dead, but the state will hit you again in the civil court to prove that you made an error and all your personal belongings will be used to feed the troll. I suppose the idea behind that was to prevent abuse of the GmbH status, but for me, in the software business in some way or another, this is a no-no.
So, the friendly UK was left. My accountant advised me to contact Barclays Wealth. It took me more than a week of hard work to get all the papers in order with recommendations from my bankers in France, Germany and Denmark, but at the end, Céondo Ltd got an account with them.
Best decision ever. In 4 years, they were always available, nice, polite and efficient. You never hit a call center, you always speak to UK people, they answer the phone within 30 seconds without the need to go through an insane dispatching process. Yes they are expensive, but you know, I would happily pay even more to keep them.
So, I heavily recommend them, it is not easy to go in but it is worth it.