Offshore Financial Centers And Regulatory Competition

In Offshore Financial Centers and Regulatory Competition, a group of leading international law and finance experts argues that offshore jurisdictions have become key players in corporate finance and captive insurance markets.

Small jurisdictions have become significant players in cross-border corporate and financial services. Their nature, legal status, and market roles, however, remain under-theorized. Lacking a sufficiently nuanced framework to describe their functions in cross-border finance - and the peculiar strengths of those achieving global dominance in the marketplace - it remains impossible to evaluate their impacts in a comprehensive manner. This book advances a new conceptual framework to refine the analysis and direct it toward more productive inquiries. Bruner canvasses extant theoretical frameworks used to describe and evaluate the roles of small jurisdictions in cross-border finance. He then proposes a new concept that better captures the characteristics, competitive strategies, and market roles of those achieving global dominance in the marketplace - the "market-dominant small jurisdiction" (MDSJ). Bruner identifies the central features giving rise to such jurisdictions' competitive strengths - some reflect historical, cultural, and geographic circumstances, while others reflect development strategies pursued in light of those circumstances. Through this lens, he evaluates a range of small jurisdictions that have achieved global dominance in specialized areas of cross-border finance, including Bermuda, Dubai, Singapore, Hong Kong, Switzerland, and Delaware. Bruner further tests the MDSJ concept's explanatory power through a broader comparative analysis, and he concludes that the MDSJs' significance will likely continue to grow - as will the need for a more effective means of theorizing their roles in cross-border finance and the global dynamics generated by their ascendance.

Evidence continues to accumulate indicating that tax havens (as they are familiarly called) account for a staggering multi-trillion-dollar loss of tax revenues worldwide. Yet, as this crucially important book shows, such offshore financial centres (OFCs) represent merely the ‘low-hanging fruit’ of a massive malaise reaching into every corner of today’s global financial services landscape with the so-called New York-London axis at its root. In a biting critique and analysis of the tax and regulatory environments from which OFCs operate, the author demonstrates that OFC-like features exist in almost every jurisdiction as a virtually inevitable outcome of the transformation of economies worldwide over the past three decades, as nations and economic blocs compete for foreign investments, and as nations seek expansion of markets to accelerate growth. Covered aspects of this phenomenon include the following: the financialization process in global transactions; erosion of credibility in political establishments with regard to their ability to govern from the centre; ultralight regulatory enclaves found in parts of developed countries; public pressure demanding enhanced international cooperation and global tax reforms, now increasingly led by the US Biden administration, and increasingly likely to reach consensus among G7 economies; and momentum generated for reform of financial reporting systems by the leaked Panama and Paradise Papers, as well as the gathering impact of the COVID-19 pandemic that led to growing government involvements in national and regional economies to protect the health and economic welfares of their respective populations. With its insights into why OFCs persist despite tightening of the rules regarding tax and financial transparency, and its insistence that the blameworthiness of large-scale tax avoidance should be assessed as a global tax problem requiring coordinated and collaborative response from both developing and advanced economies, this book takes a giant step towards genuine international tax reform. It will prove of enormous value to financial institutions, multinational corporations, tax experts, and lawmakers seeking to mend a world increasingly troubled by illicit financial flows, and problems posed by large individual and corporate tax escape artists. Disclaimer: This title is in pre-production and any names, credits or associations are subject to change. The current table of contents and subject matter is for pre-release sample purposes only.

In Offshore Financial Centers and Regulatory Competition, a group of leading international law and finance experts argues that offshore jurisdictions have become key players in corporate finance and captive insurance markets.

Contents include an overview and policy recommendations; case studies which include Australian content; international perspectives; and issues and findings.

As international financial markets have become more complex, so has the regulatory system which oversees them. The Basel Committee is just one of a plethora of international bodies and groupings which now set standards for financial activity around the world, in the interests of protecting savers and investors and maintaining financial stability. These groupings, and their decisions, have a major impact on markets in developed and developing countries, and on competition between financial firms. Yet their workings are shrouded in mystery, and their legitimacy is uncertain. Here, for the first time, two men who have worked within the system describe its origins and development in clear and accessible terms. Howard Davies was the first Chairman of the UK's Financial Services Authority, the single regulator for the whole of Britain's financial sector. David Green was Head of International Policy at the FSA, after spending thirty years in the Bank of England, and has been closely associated with the development of the current European regulatory arrangements. Now with a revised and updated introduction, which catalogues the changes made since the credit crisis erupted, this guide to the international system will be invaluable for regulators, financial market practitioners and for students of the global financial system, wherever they are located. The book shows how the system has been challenged by new financial instruments and by new types of institutions such as hedge funds and private equity. Furthermore, the growth in importance of major developing countries, who were excluded for far too long from the key decision-making for a has led to a major overhaul. The guide is essential reading for all those interested in the development of financial markets and the way they are regulated. The revised version is only available in paperback.

The IMF Working Papers series is designed to make IMF staff research available to a wide audience. Almost 300 Working Papers are released each year, covering a wide range of theoretical and analytical topics, including balance of payments, monetary and fiscal issues, global liquidity, and national and international economic developments.

This global handbook provides an up-to-date and comprehensive overview of shadow banking, or market-based finance as it has been recently coined. Engaging in financial intermediary services outside of normal regulatory parameters, the shadow banking sector was arguably a critical factor in causing the 2007-2009 financial crisis. This second volume explores three particular domains of shadow banking. The first domain deals with the macro-economic fundamentals of the respective shadow banking segments: Why do they exist, what problems do they solve and why are some of their embedded risks so persistent? The second domain captures the global dimensions of shadow banking markets, reviewing the particularities and specifics of various shadow banking systems around the world. Volume II concludes with an extensive overview of how the sector has changed since the financial crisis, focusing on regulatory arbitrage, contract imperfection and governance. Closing on unresolved issues and open-ended questions that will no doubt remain prominent in the shadow banking sector for years to come, this handbook is a must-read for professionals and policy-makers within the banking sector, as well as those researching economics and finance.