Island ‘has important role to play’
Monday 15th March 2010, 3:00PM GMT.
Jersey Finance chief executive Geoff Cook
JERSEY will have an important role to play in solving the global financial crisis, an audience of UK lawyers was told in London last week.
And, as a result, Jersey Finance chief executive Geoff Cook said that he had great confidence in Jersey’s future.
Mr Cook, who was speaking at an event at the Law Society Common Room, said that reputable international finance centres would play a vital part in helping to resolve the world’s financial crisis.
He also rejected assertions that well regulated finance centres had contributed to causing the crisis in the first place.
Mr Cook was speaking at one of a series of breakfast seminar organised by Key Trust Company to update UK lawyers on changes to legislation in the Island.
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A jurisdiction that is unable to balance it’s own finances and is experiencing the highest levels of unemployment in 30 years”will have an important role to play in solving the global economic crisis”? Perhaps you could explain how we might do this,Mr. Cook? Hedge funds are ackowledged to have been,in some not insignificant way,contributors to the crisis through their relatively unregulated trading; they have been shown to be behind some of the current pressures on the Greek government’s financial woes.
They ,along with multi-national corporations and very wealthy individuals are actively encouraged to set up “token” enterprises here and in other offshore juridictions, so that they can avoid paying their “proper dues”to their governments;thereby depriving said governments of invaluable revenue which could be used to stimulate their economies.It also enables them to keep details of their activities away from those governments.The tax paid in these jurisdictions is minimal.
How can you,therefore,assert that offshore jurisdictions played no part in the crisis?
Remember Enron?? Yes? One of the major vehicles which enabled that company to defraud billions of US$’s was organised and set up by a local law firm.Since we want businesses who wish to avoid paying their proper contribution to their home countries to set up here,we and other offshore jurisdictions will,unavoidably, always be subject to suspicion,probably rightly so.
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What, by handing back all the dogey money stashed away in the vaults
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JERSEY will have an important role to play in solving the global financial crisis!!!!!,how can that be when most offshore places had to be forced to deduct tax from EU savers and they keep 25 percent for passing it on to whatever EU country the deposit holders live in how can that be of benifit to say Germany or UK tax coffers
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By any stretch of the imagination Jersey is a bit player on the global finacial stage.
The vast sums that have been put out to shore up the world’s banks and now to bail out Greece dwarf anything that the island has ever done in the finance sector.
The players are the leaders of the G7, no one else has got the lolly to sit down at the top table!
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He he he he he! – sorry gorra larf aint yer!
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…er Northern Rock – Jersey connections
…er BAE bribery scandal – Jersey connections
…er Matrix Churchill – Jersey connections
come on! really!
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Mr Cook always ignores the damage caused by the vehicles of what Bill Gross of Pimco coined as the “Shadow Banking industry” we helped facilitate. Namely the flakey securitisation vehicles domiciled here and yet which weren’t prudentially regulated by the JFSC and which sent all the wrong incentive signals out to the underlying loan originators. They were a major contributor to the freezing up in the interbank markets back in 2007 and 2008 as well. So yes in that sense even well regulated offshore financial centres “contributed to causing the financial crisis in the first place”. The damage caused far dwarfs the beneficial effect from the extra liquidity the offshore bank branches provided to their parent companies. Naturally as an ex banker and the spokesperson for the offshore finance industry here, Mr Cook is unlikely to hold his hands up to this one.
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