Premier McKeeva Bush led a Cayman delegation to yesterday’s opening of the two-day “China Offshore Summit in Shanghai, and will travel tomorrow to Hong Kong, meet inginvestment managers and a series of private companies.

The seven-member delegation left on Saturday for the 26-27 October meeting of global financial-services professionals, who have booked each of the more-than-100 seats for a day-two “private trac” gathering sponsored by the Cayman Islands.

The “offshore summit”, in Shanghai’s Shangri-La Hotel in the Pudong Economic Zone, will offer presentations, workshops, and panel discussions, joining local financial intermediaries and professional associations with international trust companies, bankers, lawyers and corporate-service providers, examining investment opportunities and trade and wealth management in China.

The Cayman meeting, according Bush Press Secretary Charles Glidden, will survey “transparency, accountability and flexibility, legal and financial developments in Cayman, the Cayman Islands business case, what has been going on here, for people interested
in investing.

“We will have a strong presence at the conference,” he said.

Following the Shanghai gathering, the delegation will travel to Hong Kong, visiting the Cayman Islands office and meeting six private investment companies, reviewing “legislative improvements, what’s been done here, looking at what is material to people on that side of the world,” Mr Glidden said.

Led by Mr Bush, the delegation comprises Chief Officer for Financial Services Dax Basdeo; Director of the Cayman Islands Department of Investment and Commerce Jonathan Piercy; head of Fiduciary Services at the Cayman Islands Monetary Authority Rohan Bromfield;  Registrar

General for the Register of Companies Cindy Jefferson-Bulgin; George Town MLA Ellio Solomon; Bush political adviser Richard Parchment and Financial Services official Melanie McField.

Speakers competing for inward investment with the Cayman Islands include Chief Executive Officer and Executive Director of the Bahamas Financial Services Board Wendy Warren, and Trinidadian attorney and notary public for the Belize branch of Morgan & Morgan Trust Corporation  Rishi Alain Mungal.

Mr Glidden declined to say if Mr Bush would meet officials from Beijing’s China Harbour Engineering Company, scheduled to sign a port-development agreement with Mr Bush next month.

The delegation returns to George Town on 2 November.