Short answers, pulled from the story.
A shell corporation is a legal entity designed to hold value without engaging in commerce, and the United States Securities and Exchange Commission defines such a registrant as having no or nominal operations and assets consisting solely of cash or nominal other assets.
Typical countries of domicile include offshore financial centers like the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, and the British Virgin Islands, alongside European jurisdictions such as Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, and the Channel Islands, as well as Asian hubs like Hong Kong and Singapore.
In 2013, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists published a report called Offshore Leaks which contained information about the use and owners of 130,000 shell companies, many belonging to politicians and celebrities from around the world.
In July 2017, the authorities ordered nearly 2,000 shell companies to be shut down while the Securities and Exchange Board of India imposed trading restrictions on 162 listed entities as shell companies.
Anonymous shell companies were effectively banned via the Corporate Transparency Act in January 2021, but in 2025 the US Treasury department announced it would not enforce this law and on the 21st of March 2025, FinCEN announced an interim final rule removing the reporting requirement for domestic businesses.
Sega Sammy Holdings formed a shell company in September 2013 called Sega Dream Corporation into which were transferred valuable assets of the old company, including the Atlus brand and Index Corporation's intellectual property, leaving the liabilities of the old company behind before the former Index Corporation was dissolved.