‘Opening up’ is nothing new for Cayman Islands

Sir, Your report “Caymans poised to shed veil of secrecy” (January 18) completely mis-characterises the context of an otherwise worthy initiative of the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority to carry out a comprehensive review of the corporate governance framework for Cayman Islands hedge funds.

The Cayman Islands is domicile to the majority of the world’s hedge funds and has always taken its global role very seriously in terms of regulation and transparency. Your suggestion that our jurisdiction is “finally opening up” flies in the face of many years of both international regulatory co-operation and tax information exchange initiatives carried out by this country over the past decade and a half. It also fails to recognise that the funds in question are private placement vehicles that already disclose all service providers, including directors, in their offering memorandums. In other words, investors have full access to the necessary information required for their own due diligence.

As one of the primary industry bodies representing the financial services sector in the Cayman Islands, Cayman Finance can confirm that the industry welcomes all efforts by the financial services regulator to enhance the corporate governance framework wherever it deems possible.

At the same time we fail to understand why after many years of enhancing our regulatory and transparency regime, in particular over the past 15 years, articles such as the one published by the FT continue to perpetuate an outdated image of the global regulation of the offshore financial services market and, in particular, the Cayman Islands.

Richard Coles, Chairman, Cayman Finance, Grand Cayman

For more on this story go to:

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/4ebc732e-64c4-11e2-934b-00144feab49a.html#axzz2IzhSKwxU

See also iNews Cayman “Cayman Islands to open up to scrutiny” at:

http://www.ieyenews.com/2013/01/cayman-islands-to-open-up-to-scrutiny/