Industry News

Employees of Appleby’s Cayman office raised over $8,000 for the Cayman HospiceCare, Meals on Wheels and Cayman Islands Breast Cancer Foundation by dressing down on Fridays during the firm’s last financial year.

Although it’s funded by the Cayman Island insurance industry, the Educational Scholarship Trust Fund isn’t just for students who intend to work in the financial services sector.  A pair of scholarship recipients, neither of whom studied finance, spoke at an Insurance Managers Association of Cayman luncheon on the importance of helping Caymanians pursue studies in other fields in order to bring their expertise back to the Islands.

The recent controversies over the lack of transparency of Mitt Romney’s 2012 tax returns and the existence of several offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands and Switzerland raise important questions on the role tax havens play in the global economy. While the public image of such havens may be that of a tool of tax cheats and criminals, a closer look at the role of tax havens in a global context provides a perspective of the reality of tax competition.

Offshore financial centres are commonly labelled “tax havens” due to the misconception that they are used solely to avoid or evade tax. As a result of this misconception, during the first tranche of the global financial crisis, world leaders came out on the attack against OFCs, arguing that they are inherently bad and have to be stopped in order to protect dwindling government tax revenue.

The Cayman Islands Monetary Authority (CIMA) is investigating whether the Cayman Islands Branch of HSBC Mexico S.A. (“The Cayman Islands Branch”) breached any local laws or regulations.