Cyprus, UAE, Switzerland and even Portugal are all some good suggestions. Personally I would look at what country makes it less complicated to navigate in the financial services as well as when you travel.
Just wonder how best seller Vanuatu is now, with a clueless government doing nothing to avoid the loss of Schengen and UK visa-free possibility... If that would happen, nearly all your previous clients will be quite angry
What would be the Plan B? Just to have a citizenship which is in many banks suspicious? Due to the EU blacklist there are many banks which simply do not want to deal with Vanuatu related matters... In a proper Plan B (whatever it means) a citizenship should be included in a country where you can actually live if you have to run away
I would stay clear of Germany. The business environment is slow, highly bureaucratic and complex even for native speakers, the authorities don’t speak English in most cases and it is a high tax jurisdiction.
If you really want to go ahead you can have a look at www.firma.de and www.Clevver.io who will set up companies for you. However you should do a deep dive into substance requirements and everything related to running a company in Germany.
If I was you I’d look into countries that allow to do everything in English (eg Cyprus, Malta, UK) first as this will simplify lots of things.
You should︀ also consider that while both NL/DE have a significant Syrian population, large parts of the︁ locals are unfortunately still quite prejudiced against Arabic refugees.
They announced with a big fanfare that CS Global will rebrand the program for a fee of US$10,000 per appplication, and as the tender was not legally handled according to the Attorney General, CS Global said thank you but no.
Depends on the development, if they go and bent over Putin to stick something up the wrong place, you will be fine with HK but if they sleep with Putin to make him their whore, I would not setup a company in Hong Kong, for sure not. So better go the safe route.