Hi everyone,
One of my foreign clients has asked me to market their services to local companies. There is one local company which is interested, but they have a restriction that they may only work with locally-registered companies, which disqualifies my foreign client. My foreign client has dealt with this restriction in the past (in other countries) by partnering up with a local agent. In this case, they naturally suggested that my company be the local agent.
The work is consultancy, specifically engineering studies and risk assessments on oil and gas pipelines. I have worked for this foreign client before (as an employee) and trust the people there, but I want to know if I would put my company, or its directors/employees at risk by acting as the local agent. My company would essentially invoice the local customer, make payments to my foreign client, and coordinate work between the two if necessary.
One risk I can foresee is if something were to happen, say a critical error in the engineering work, the angry local company may sue my company as it would be the local agent. In the worst case, my company goes bankrupt and shuts down which is undesirable but tolerable. However, are the employees/directors of my company at risk for something my foreign client does incorrectly? Assuming there is no financial hanky panky, I think that the employees/directors are safe because the engineering certification for the work will come from my foreign client. But are there other risks that I've missed? I would like to know your opinions.
Has anyone done this kind of local/foreign partnering before and is there any advice you could offer? I'd appreciate it.