Ogier is expanding its structured finance operation in Ireland with the purchase of a substantial portion of the Pegasus Corporate Services Limited (PCSL) client base plus supporting infrastructure. The expanded business, which will be called Ogier Fiduciary Services (Ireland) Limited, comes just 18 months after Ogier first started providing administration services out of Ireland.
The seminar was the eighth biennial gathering since legal advisers from the Caribbean first met in 1991 to discuss developments and ongoing issues in financial sector regulation and to learn from each other.
This year's workshops focused on the legal risks, immunities and responsibilities of financial regulators.
Some 34 participants from 14 regional regulatory authorities as well as speakers from the USA and the UK attended the seminar at the Grand Cayman Marriott Beach Resort on 24 and 25 May.
Conference Chairman, CIMA's General Counsel, Langston Sibblies, said that the feedback from participants was that the event underscored the commonality of many of the issues with which regulators across the region were dealing.
"Participants expressed the view that the seminar was very useful in increasing their awareness of what is happening in neighbouring jurisdictions and how their counterparts were dealing with the issues involved in regulating financial services," Mr Sibblies siad. "It was beneficial to have a mix of perspectives from regualtors within and outside the region, standard-setting bodies, academics, and from members of industry."
Among the topics addressed were recent developments and trends relating to central bank immunity.
Presenter, Professor Charles Proctor, UK barrister and Honorary Professor in the Birmingham University School of Law, examined regulatory and state immunity, the challenges to that immunity, and how courts dealt with the issue.
He concluded that if authorities act within the limits of local statute, and in good faith, they should not be liable.
In the session titled "The Single Regulator for the Financial Industry," Rohan Bromfield, the Head of Fiduciary Services for CIMA, outlined the rationale for jurisdictions' establishment of a single regulatory body to oversee their financial services. He presented issues to consider in setting up a single regulator in order to ensure effectiveness and accountability, and drew on the experiences of Cayman, the UK, and other jurisdictions.
Also presenting on this topic was Esco Henry, the Legal Adviser at the Eastern Caribbean Central Bank (ECCB). The ECCB regulates and supervises deposit-taking institutions in the eight countries that make up the Eastern Caribbean Currency Union. It is the only multiple jurisdiction central bank in the region.
Ms Henry pointed out that, for other financial services and institutions, there were multiple regulators in each of the jurisdictions. Currently, the union is seeking to integrate member countries' regulatory framework by encouraging each jurisdiction to set up single regulators for activities that fall outside the scope of the ECCB. The union is also contemplating the creation of an ECCU-level oversight committee to further enhance integration.
The trends and challenges in international regulatory cooperation were explored by Jackie Wilson, the Director of Legal and Enforcement Division in the British Virgin Islands Financial Services Commission; William Kattan of the Bermuda Monetary Authority and Rochelle Deveraux of the Central Bank of the Bahamas.
Ms Wilson pointed out that the liberalization of markets and the complexity of the financial system were increasing, as was the scope of information expected to be provided for cross-border civil, administrative and criminal investigations. Among the benchmarks against which international standard setters assess cooperation is a jurisdiction's power to provide confidential information.
She considered the legal risks that regulators faced and recommended ongoing vigilance; constant refining of regulatory processes and systems; commitment of time, financial resources, adequately trained staff and appropriate statutory powers, and securing a level playing field.
Ms Deveraux observed that the trend in international cooperation was towards erosion of confidentiality. She predicted that within the next 15 to 20 years it would be completely eroded unless our jurisdictions stand up for themselves with international standard setters.
A closely-related session explored current anti-money laundering and counter terrorist financing (AML/CFT) standards and reviews.
Speakers were the Dean of the University of Edinburgh School of Law, Professor William Gilmore, who is also a CIMA director; Ross Delston, founder of the AML/CFT compliance consulting firm GlobalAML, and CIMA Legal Counsel, Candice Huggins. Calvin Wilson, the Executive Director of the Caribbean Financial Action Task Force Secretariat, moderated that session.
Professor Gilmore noted that the current focus of the international standard-setting community was on reviewing and assessing jurisdictions' compliance with the standards. He outlined what standard setters typically looked for when conducting jurisdictional reviews and what is required for jurisdictions to meet those expectations.
Mr Delston explored the USA's anti-money laundering framework, while Ms Huggins examined the consequences to financial institutions of non-compliance with AML standards. She stressed the importance of filing suspicious activity reports, understanding the risks of particular businesses, and the importance of auditing and testing an institution's AML policies and procedures to ensure they were being implemented.
Risk-based supervision (the regulatory approach in which supervision of institutions is tailored based on the risk profile of the institutions) was the subject of presentations by Malcolm Eden, CIMA's Head of Banking; Nicole Chapman, the Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago's Manager for Legal and Corporate Services, and Anna McLean, the Regional Director of Compliance for First Caribbean International Bank.
Their presentations focussed on the banking sector and covered the legal and supervisory implications of risk-based supervision; the framework within which this approach operates in Cayman and in Trinidad and Tobago; the rationale, benefits and issues for institutions and jurisdictions, and what institutions expect from banking supervisors.
Cayman Islands Solicitor General, Cheryl Richards, spoke on "Conducting a Money Laundering Prosecution: Issues for Regulatory Authorities."
Other presentations were given by local attorney Ian Paget-Brown on banking confidentiality, and Eduardo D'Angelo P. Silva, outgoing president of the Cayman Islands Bankers Association, who gave a private sector perspective on the impact of international trends in banking.
The seminar was officially opened by the Financial Secretary Hon Kenneth Jefferson.