Guernsey Sacks Financial Services Commission As PR Agency

by Jason Gorringe, Tax-News.com, London

03 May 2001

Three years after the UK Government's Edwards Report on its offshore dependent territories recommended a separation between the regulatory and promotional aspects of Guernsey's offshore financial sector, the Guernsey International Business Association is going to take over responsibility for external marketing from the Financial Services Commission.

Guernsey news publication This Is Guernsey (http://www.thisisguernsey.com/business/business1.html) reports that the Giba annual general meeting supported the idea: 'There is a strong case for a promotional company to promote finance in Guernsey,’ said new Giba chairman Stephen Jones. ‘It could be argued that we don’t need one and that we can do our own promotion but this is increasingly about management of PR and media perceptions that customers get from the media. Having a promotional company would be important for new business but it’s also needed for managing our response for adverse comment in the media.’

Mr Jones said he expected Government to contribute towards the costs involved, saying that the amount of tax received from the industry was not reflected in the level of promotional spending by comparison with the tourist industry. Giba would apppoint a full-time paid executive who would be able to deal with the media and speak at conferences.

‘We are not talking about a massive advertising campaign,' said Jones, 'It’s more about managing the media and making sure that when there are relevant conferences promoting offshore services that we are aware of them and represented. ‘But we want to be able to promote ourselves as a sector in new and emerging markets, which links in closely with e-commerce.’

According to This Is Guernsey, Mr Jones said that the publicity surrounding the Edwards report had highlighted a serious lack of understanding of Guernsey's finance sector in Europe and the UK. He thought that the industry often 'kept its head down’ in response to sensational or inaccurate comments in the national media instead of correcting them.

The Financial Services Commission site works reasonably well, but it's all too evident that it's not kept up by cutting edge pr types: the latest news item is dated 1st April and starts (no joke!):

'For the purposes of the transitional provisions in section 59 of the Fiduciary Law, the prescribed date is 1 June 2001'

The Fiduciary Law (regulating trust intermediaries) is innovative, important, and highly relevant to the ongoing OECD imbroglio, but you wouldn't know it from the FSC's rather literal offering.

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