No, it really has nothing to do with that. It's as both erich and I have explained.
There is no other country in Europe (that I know of) where you can start a limited liability company for only a couple hundred Euros. It has become the modus operandi of many scammers, criminals and other such individuals and organizations to form a Ltd. company in the UK and operate from there. I realize that people IN the UK don't hear much about that, because it's not an issue over there.
However, I'm sure there is information about that in English somewhere.
To clarify the issue a little more, let me give you an example.
A German man forms a company, ABC Ltd, in England. His business is "a lottery" of some kind. So the guy makes a website with a nice "about us" page. The company name is ABC Ltd, the address is some suite in an office building somewhere in London. In truth it is only a forwarding address or something of the kind.
So guy starts writing letters to thousands of residents in Germany and tells them in those letters that they have won €10000. All they need to do is call this number: 0900-XXXXXX (0900 numbers are premium numbers in Germany and can cost up to several Euros per minute).
Some people actually do call that number. They spend maybe 5, maybe 10, maybe 30 minutes on the phone.
Nothing comes of it. Then, the next month they receive a very high phone bill. They decide that they probably were scammed. So, what do they do?
They could, for example, sue the company for the €10000 that they are supposed to have won.
Now, the guy who formed ABC Ltd notices that he is getting a lot of angry letters and some legal heat. What does he do?
Nothing, that's what. The only address that he has in England is not a physical address of residence or place of business. It's just a forwarding address.
The victims figure out that they were scammed. They could fly to England, hire a lawyer and sue the company. However, the company was formed with (for example) 100 GBP of capital and is only liable up to that amount. Plus, the laws in the UK and Germany are very different in many aspects and that is just the beginning of it. Jurisdiction is an issue as well.
So the victims figure: with hardly any chance of success, it's not worth it. They don't sue. They pay their phone company the money that they now owe them. The scammer ABC Ltd. get their share that the phone company owes them. The criminal is home free.
Now, if he makes sure that his scam doesn't get too big (more attention, more chance of trouble), he can do this many times under many different company names.
You can't do this with any other legal form easily accessible to Europeans. Maybe there are some countries in Asia or Eastern Europe where you could do something similar. But there is the language barrier. Everyone speaks English (more or less) in the business world. But doing something like this in Latvia or Romania might be a lot more difficult. And it is more expensive too.
Now - those things are not an issue in the UK, Ireland, Australia or anywhere else that have the legal form Ltd. Because all the hurdles I just described do not exist for them. That is why a Ltd company is no problem there.
@Kier - regarding the Jelsoft Ltd not being an issue in the footer: I doubt that XenForo Ltd. in the footer will be an issue. The few of us who it may be an issue for, will probably just buy the branding free option.
Companies of a certain size may have trouble/misgivings about having a "Ltd." in their footer. But that really isn't something that XenForo Ltd can do anything about. I mean, vBulletin Germany had Jelsoft Ltd in the footer too. Doesn't look like it's done much harm to their business either.
So in closing: yes, Ltd companies do raise suspicions in several European countries. But no, that does not mean that having "XenForo Ltd" in the footer is going to cause problems of more than trivial proportions. For the few of us who will have a problem with that, we will have to buy the branding free option.