A Financial Times article by Ralph Atkins and Alex Barker, published on Tuesday 21st May, when new light on the very slow (progress?) of the Financial Transaction Tax (FTT) in the context of the eleven European Members who voted for it (the “FTT 11”). It seems that serious stress fractures are beginning to appear in the FTT, amongst the FTT 11 – the 11 EU Member States, including Germany and …

In the last couple of years we have seen a mammoth growth in the interest and focus on fund governance both overall and specifically with regard to directors of hedge funds.  This focus has often been directed at the Cayman Islands, particularly following the Weavering Case.  As a result CIMA, the Cayman Islands fund sector regulator has recently introduced corporate governance reforms, largely concentrating on the question of directors.  Historically …

Custom House has been a fan of Malta for at least eight years now.  As a result we cringe when we see a knee jerk response of some so-called pundits who imply that Malta and Cyprus come out of the same mold, just because they are both relatively small islands in the Mediterranean. The following article, which was published by Tonio Fenech, of Fenech Farrugia Fiott, an alliterative firm of …

The following article appeared in the Sunday Times of Malta on Sunday 31st March.  The article which is by Lino Spiteri [an Oxford-trained economist and former Deputy Governor of the Central Bank and former Minister of Finance] not only describes how Malta’s financial centre has grown from a modest start less than 10 years ago to an impressive status today, as a result of a bi-partisan political partnership and a …

I see from the Daily Telegraph that George Osborne, the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer, recently said that the FTT scheme would amount to a tax on pensioners and cost up to one million jobs across the EU “without costing bankers a penny”.  He went on to say that the traders would migrate to the US or Asia taking the financial industry with them.  Naturally I agree with them, because …