August 22, 2008. The Chief Executive Officer of Cable & Wireless in the Caribbean, Richard Dodd, has recently made an announcement that the company with principal operations in the Channel Islands, the Caribbean, Panama, Macau, and Monaco will invest more than USD 400 million in Caribbean telecommunications development and this investment will be made over the next 3 years.
It is worth noting that this announcement followed positive company results that were published by C&W in May 2008. The results revealed that revenues for Cable & Wireless International had increased by 6% year on year to GBP 1.2 billion.
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August 12, 2008. According to 2nd quarter figures released by the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority (CIMA), more than 10 000 investment funds have been registered in the Cayman Islands, which confirms achieving of a key milestone by Cayman financial services industry. 10 037 funds were registered in Cayman at the end of June 2008.
Senior investment funds partner at Walkers, Mark Lewis, noted that the 10 000 barrier has been achieved as hedge funds continue to be registered in this offshore jurisdiction and that Cayman remains the jurisdiction of choice for investment managers and their advisers from all around the world.
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July 29, 2008. Following the US Senate hearing that was held on July 24, the United States Congress intensified its attention to offshore finance. The US Senate hearing held a discussion as regards why so many US companies have established entities in offshore jurisdictions like the Cayman Islands. These talks resulted in proposals to introduce stricter reporting requirements for tax purposes.
The findings of a Government Accountability Office (GAO) investigation of the Ugland House, which is home to a legal firm in Cayman with nearly 19 000 registered companies and approximately half of these Cayman-incorporated companies being American, were introduced at the hearing.
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July 12, 2008. On July 10, 2008, the Governor in Cabinet announced that Mr Carlyle McLaughlin Jr. has been appointed as the Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority (CIMA). This appointment will become effective on July 27, 2008. Also, new directors to the CIMA Board - two long-standing financial industry professionals Harry Chisholm and Richard Harris - have been appointed by the Cabinet.
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June 24, 2008. The Cayman Islands Financial Services Association (CIFSA) has responded to a recent report by the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of the United Kingdom's House of Commons that was looking for corrections as regards a misrepresentation of the standards of regulation within the UK's Overseas Territories mentioned in the report. The PAC report stated that the financial regulation standards in most of the UK's Overseas Territories were not as good as those existing in the UK Crown Dependencies like Jersey and the Isle of Man.
Eduardo Silva, Chairman of CIFSA, responded to the statements. He said that it is important to correct any misrepresentations that may have influence on international perceptions of the regulation standards in the Cayman Islands. He noted that Jersey officially recognizes anti-money laundering practices of the Cayman Islands as equivalent to its own. According to the Jersey Financial Services Commission's (JFSC), Jersey's financial institutions trust the "know-your customer" and "due diligence" procedures of the institutions in the Cayman Islands as they are as effective as the legislation that must be observed in Jersey.
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June 15, 2008. It has been recently announced by the government of the Cayman Islands that the legislature of this offshore country will shortly debate new legislation. The new legislation will be aimed to strengthen the jurisdiction's anti-money laundering defences.
The bill that will be debated is a fully-revised version of the Proceeds of Criminal Conduct Law. This revised version of the Proceeds of Criminal Conduct Law proposes to further modernise the anti-money laundering legislative and institutional frameworks in Cayman.
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June 6, 2008. Recently, The European Union has revised a list of countries with satisfactory anti-money-laundering controls and excluded the Cayman Islands and the British Virgin Islands from the "white list". The decision to leave tax havens off a "white list" of jurisdictions that are known as controlling money laundering in a satisfactory regarded not only the Cayman Islands, but also such offshore jurisdictions as the British Virgin Islands, the Isle of Man, Jersey, and Guernsey.
Cayman and the BVI have been excluded from the list - so, they have been effectively blacklisted, while Guernsey, Jersey, and the Isle of Man have been placed on an "intermediate" list of financial centres.
All the above-mentioned offshore jurisdictions claim that they have done all they could to comply with international anti-money laundering standards.
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May 26, 2008. It has been recently revealed that the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority (CIMA) was part of the Caribbean Financial Action Task Force (CFATF) team that evaluated the anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing regime of the British Virgin Islands in February.
The annual report for 2007 published by the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority states that Legal Counsel Sandra Edun-Watler was a legal examiner in the delegation that was dealing with the 3rd Round Mutual Evaluation in the British Virgin Islands. Law enforcement, financial and legal examiners were members of this delegation. The examiners were officials from Barbados, the Netherlands and Trinidad & Tobago.
The on-site inspection was undertaken from February 10 until February 23.
It is worth noting that the Cayman Islands underwent the evaluation process, under the CFATF initiative, in November 2008 in its 3rd Round Mutual Evaluation. Once every 3 years CFATF member undergoes a peer review.
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May 15, 2008. On May 12, 2008, the Cayman Islands Government and the Turks and Caicos Islands Government signed an agreement that states that the Cayman Islands Lands and Survey Department will develop and implement a Land Registry system for the Turks and Caicos Islands Government.
The system will be fully computerized and it will be a related GIS (Geographical Information Systems). Also, an interactive website will be created The development of the Registry includes also the creation of an interactive website.
Talks on improving Land Registry system have been ongoing between Cayman and Turks and Caicos since March 2007. As Cayman officials offered technical and practical assistance to the Turks and Caicos Islands, a long-term cooperative agreement was signed.
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April 25, 2008. Project managers are completing a bid aimed to establish a local professional chapter in Cayman that is to make the jurisdiction attractive for investors and businesses.
Project management has been recognized as a profession since the US-based Project Management Institute (PMI) was established about 40 years ago, and currently this institute has 260 000 members and 251 chapters around the world.
President of the Cayman Islands Project Management Association, Patrick Cimolini, and a group of project managers intend to establish the Cayman chapter of PMI and hope to set it up by the middle of 2008. This can give people more confidence in investing in the Cayman Islands and doing business in this offshore jurisdiction.
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April 12, 2008. The international ratings agency, Moody's Investors Service said that Cayman's maintenance of its favorable government foreign currency bond rating shows the economic resilience of this offshore country in the face of uncertainty that surrounds the US economy and in the face of recent natural disasters.
In March, Moody's published a report on the Cayman Islands' macroeconomic performance. According to the report, Hurricane Ivan caused the devastation in 2004, but the offshore jurisdiction bounced back from disaster and kept intact its Aa3 government foreign currency bond rating. This government foreign currency bond rating is the highest in the Caribbean, and it is 2nd only to Bermuda.
The report discussed Cayman's performance in 2007, noting that economic growth has stabilized to about 4% over the previous 2 years.
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March 3, 2008. The Cayman Islands Monetary Authority (CIMA) has broadened its network of agreements with overseas regulatory bodies by concluding Information Exchange Agreement with Washington. The Information Exchange Agreement with the Office of the Insurance Commissioner (OIC) of Washington State, US, was concluded to facilitate cross-border financial services supervision.
The information exchange agreement is a document in the form of a memorandum of understanding on information sharing between CIMA and the OIC that regulates insurance business in and from Washington State. The regulators of Cayman and Washington State have cooperated on information exchange since 2005.
In addition to the memorandum of understanding with the OIC, the Cayman Islands has cross-border agreements with the Jersey Financial Services Commission; the Isle of Man Financial Supervision Commission; the Bermuda Monetary Authority; the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Securities Exchange Commission; the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions, Canada; the Central Bank of Brazil; the Bank of Jamaica; the Superintendency of Banks of the Republic of Panama. It also has a multi-lateral memorandum of understanding with 8 Caribbean regulators.
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March 1, 2008. Recently, the Cayman Islands Financial Services Association (CIFSA) has made the following suggestion - although the Cayman Islands' service providers and the Regulatory Authority performs many activities to combat money laundering, certain international financial centres fail to recognise the Cayman anti-money laundering regime. CIFSA meant a recent article in the Cayman Observer newspaper that described that efforts to gain a competitive edge in Bermuda, Dubai, Dublin and other jurisdictions have led to difficulties attracting outsourced funds business from the Cayman Islands.
CIFSA said that without recognising the Cayman anti-money laundering regime, service providers ar required to complete additional due diligence work, which is an extra regulatory hurdle, while administrators in the Cayman Islands are outsourcing administrative work to counterparts in other offshore jurisdictions. The Cayman Islands Financial Services Association suggests that jurisdictions that have recognised the Cayman anti-money laundering framework as equivalent to their own (like Jersey, Guernsey, Gibraltar, the Isle of Man, Singapore, Japan, the US, and all the major developed European nations), have seen business growth between the 2 jurisdictions, and this will further increase because the Cayman Islands' market takes a leading position in the hedge funds sector.
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February 21, 2008. The Cayman Islands Monetary Authority (CIMA) and the United Kingdom's national regulator of financial services and markets Financial Services Authority (FSA) signed a memorandum of understanding for the exchange of information and investigative assistance. This latest cooperation agreement between the CIMA and a UK regulator provides a formal basis for cooperation between the two authorities. The agreement outlines the types of assistance that can be requested and given by the two organizations.
The document is similar to 11 other agreements signed by the CIMA with overseas financial regulators.
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February 1, 2008. The Cayman Islands Monetary Authority (CIMA) released CIMA's Year in Review, 2006-2007 report to disclose its operations for the financial year ending on June 30, 2007 and indicators of financial sector's performance in the Cayman Islands. The Authority reported growth in financial services during the 2006-2007 fiscal year.
According to CIMA, the number of funds, fund administrators and securities investment businesses grew 16%, from June 2006 to June 2007. Funds accounted for the largest portion - they rose 14%. Insurance licences, comprising domestic insurer licences, captive licences, insurance managers, brokers and agents grew 4.6%. The number of banking and trust licences in the banking sector decreased by 4%. The number of the assets and liabilities of licensees continued to increase.
The report published by CIMA also outlined the Authority's performance against its 2006-2007 strategic goals and discussed its operational support and administrative activities.
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January 15, 2008. Last year, Deutsche Bank earned the award as the best private bank in the Cayman Islands in the Euromoney private banking survey. Deutsche Bank revealed that on January 8, 2007. This year, Deutsche Bank has been named as best private bank in the Cayman Islands for the 2nd time. The prestigious award was given by Private Banking and Wealth Management Survey 2008 carried by Euromoney magazine.
In 2008, Deutsche Bank is celebrating its 25th anniversary in the Cayman Islands.
Deutsche Bank's offshore group located in Cayman, Jersey, Guernsey and Mauritius was recognised in all the 4 jurisdictions, and its offices in Guernsey, Jersey, and Mauritius were named top in the regional section of the survey. Globally, Deutsche Bank takes 5th position in the overall worldwide rankings.
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