Ghost Foundation moves HQ to Singapore

Publishing platform Ghost has announced that it will be closing all operations in the UK and reincorporating in Singapore. "This is easily the biggest business change we've made to Ghost since it started, and will hopefully give us a much easier time trading internationally," said founder John O'Nolan in a blog post.

O'Nolan noted that as a distributed, online non-profit organisation, there is no need to be based in any one country. Being based in the UK had led to accounting challenges, especially after the introduction of new European legislation in January 2015.

Ghost's new home had to support Stripe, for payments; avoid the need to comply with European legislation; allow incorporation by non-residents; "have progressive government with sane accounting", and have an equivalent to the UK's limited company structure, O'Nolan said.

"We started thinking about all of this around December 2014, and by November 2015 we had settled on Singapore - one of just a couple of countries in the entire world which was able to fulfil all of our needs," he said.

"Singapore is a progressive country with a fast-growing startup scene, and is exceptionally in tune with the times. This is in no small part due to its short (independent since just 1965), but rich history. Singapore has no natural resources or land mass to speak of, so it has always relied on continuously making itself as attractive as possible for international trade."

There will be few changes, O'Nolan noted, as the Singapore legal system is based on British Common Law. The company will have the same legal structure in Singapore as it had in the UK. Ghost Pro customers will see price falls of 17% to 27%, but all customer data remains in Amsterdam.

"We’ll go wherever gives us the best service and is the most advantageous for Ghost as an organisation. We’ll continually re-evaluate where that is, as we do with all service providers," O'Nolan concluded.