Guernsey’s Chief Minister Lyndon Trott has addressed influential figures at the City of London Corporation Finance Committee Dinner on the subject of Guernsey’s financial services sector, further reinforcing Guernsey's image as a well-regulated international financial centre.
Deputy Trott said that he was honoured and privileged to speak at the City of London Corporation Finance Committee Dinner, an annual City dinner where a number of leading players from governance, finance, law and commerce, as well as members of the Common Council of the City of London Corporation, were present.
The Chief Minister told them that he believed that the solution to present economic gloom rests more with them than with politicians.
“Politicians have a role, but the solution is ultimately not in their hands, it is in the hands of financial markets, financial service providers and regulators.”
“The solution to the present problems is certainly not to move away from a healthy capitalist society - just the opposite - the solution is to retain it but to remove the excesses and errors of the past.”
Deputy Trott said that cross-border regulatory cooperation will be more important in the future than ever before.
“Without such cooperation, both in normal times and at times of crisis, it becomes virtually impossible to protect investments such as bank deposits with an institution in one jurisdiction, if that institution has operations in other jurisdictions where activities and subsequent risks are not understood or shared.”
“The danger not only to investors but also to international finance and trade is that in the absence of effective cooperation, jurisdictions will have little alternative but to adopt protectionist policies, involving the ring-fencing of assets and capital and the curbing of cross border activities. Such measures would raise costs, reduce flexibility and make global recovery and growth much more difficult. This is a major issue for all jurisdictions, not just for Guernsey and the UK. We are all living in one global village and if we are to avoid economic depression we must not be insular in our approach.”
Deputy Trott also reported healthy year-end deposit and fund statistics to the dinner’s participants, though he admitted that the island had not been completely unaffected by the contagion in financial markets.
“The most comforting aspect of these figures is that the financial services model that we employ in Guernsey is both diversified and low risk,” he urged.
Speaking after the event, Trott said:
“This was as good an opportunity as it ever gets to broadcast to an attentive and well-informed audience of the very strong message that Guernsey has to give about all aspects of its financial services industry. I was able to explain in discussions before, during and after dinner that there were many more aspects to the Guernsey economy than simply finance and that we were confident for the future, notwithstanding global economic conditions.”
Peter Niven, Chief Executive of Guernsey Finance, added: “It is a major endorsement of Guernsey as a leading international finance centre that the Chief Minister was invited to speak at this dinner. It gave him an excellent opportunity to showcase the diversity and low-risk of the Island’s finance industry to many senior figures from the city of London. Guernsey is continually reinforcing the strength of its banking, funds, fiduciary and insurance sectors to audiences within London – the centre which is our principal source of business flows.”
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