Cayman Finance News

HEDGE WEEK.  There’s no doubt that the global financial meltdown has resulted in
a fundamentally changed set of financial and regulatory circumstances and a more
hostile political environment. Yet it is perverse that the Cayman Islands have been the
focus of numerous public relations attacks from G20 countries that themselves have
suffered badly at the hands of the global meltdown.

GEORGE TOWN, GRAND CAYMAN; 22 December, 2010:  Claims of Cayman funds re-domiciling to the EU are unsubstantiated.

The Irish fund industry states that they have doubled their registered funds to 7.4%, but these statistics pale in comparison to the Cayman fund industry, which continues to grow by approximately 95 funds per month, according to the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority.  The regulator is reporting a natural attrition rate of de-registrations of approximately 5%, which has been a typical rate over the past several years, indicating stability in the Cayman industry.

Published in the IFC Review November 2010.

The criticism to which the offshore centre is routinely subjected has now reached a crescendo in the wake of the regulatory response to the financial crisis and the hunt by domestic Treasuries for tax revenues to meet the burgeoning deficits of many G20 countries. This then, is a trying time, but do the criticisms amplified by the formidable public relations machines of the EU and US governments withstand scrutiny or are they simply a transparent exercise in blame deflection? Even the briefest analysis does not suggest a level playing field.

1 December 2010
What I am going to talk about this morning is the way in which the macroeconomic changes and the onshore political focus post the financial crisis of 2008/09 have affected and will continue to affect the offshore financial centres and specifically the Cayman Islands. In analysing these issues, I will identify the detractors, separate the truth from the myths perpetrated by the detractors and in doing so analyse which of the criticism of the Cayman Islands is justified and of concern to us and what is not. That in turn will lead me to an analysis of what we therefore need to do to realign our financial services industry to ensure the economic success of the Cayman Islands for the future. There is no doubt that as a result of the global financial meltdown we are facing a fundamentally changed set of financial and regulatory circumstances and a more hostile political environment. Although I agree with the Premier that the Keynesian economic solution (that is high government public sector and infrastructure spending) is not the way forward for Cayman, Keynes did rightly say "When circumstances change I change my mind: what do you do?”

Channel 4’s Dispatches documentary, “How the rich beat the taxman,” plumbed new depths in cliché ridden journalism and the recycling of hoary old myths.

When a director is reduced to showing long lingering shots of his reporter doodling at his keyboard, you know immediately they don’t have many moving pictures to show the viewer.  This is doubly embarrassing as the reporter in question is Antony Barnett, an investigative reporter with a solid track record in print journalism. (That’s the medium where words matter more than pictures.)

Barnett relies heavily throughout the entire documentary on the opinions of Richard Murphy and John Christensen – the leading lights, correction -the only lights, in the Tax Justice Network. This organisation, however, is not the major institution it appears to be. Google Streetview reveals that TJN’s global HQ is nothing more than a semi-detached house in Chesham, Buckinghamshire.  More fool Dispatches for giving them so much prominence.