An orphan structure is a financing term referring to a company whose shares are held by a trustee on a non-charitable purpose trust. The company is said to be an "orphan" as it is not beneficially owned by anyone.
Orphan structures are usually used in offshore structures to ensure that the assets and liabilities of the subject company are treated as "off-balance-sheet" with respect to the sponsor of the structure. Other reasons for creating an orphan structure are to avoid or minimise regulation which might otherwise apply to a structure, and to ensure that the company is "bankruptcy remote" from companies in the same group as the sponsor.
Orphan structures are relatively common features of securitisation vehicles, where the asset backed bonds are issued by the orphan company.
Famous quotes containing the words orphan and/or structure:
“For the LORD your God is God of gods and Lord of lords, the great God, mighty and awesome, who is not partial and takes no bribe, who executes justice for the orphan and the widow, and who loves the strangers, providing them food and clothing.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Deuteronomy 10:17,18.
“The philosopher believes that the value of his philosophy lies in its totality, in its structure: posterity discovers it in the stones with which he built and with which other structures are subsequently built that are frequently better—and so, in the fact that that structure can be demolished and yet still possess value as material.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)