Jersey Finance Industry Representatives To Meet UK Lawmakers

by Amanda Banks, for LawAndTax-News.com, London

08 July 2008

Representatives from Jersey Finance Limited and other senior colleagues from the Industry will be meeting with the MPs on the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee when they visit the Island this week.

There are six MPs in the party from the UK and they will meet with Jersey Finance Chief Executive, Geoff Cook, Technical Director, Rob Kirkby and Advocate Alex Ohlsson, a member of the fiscal strategy working group and Partner at Carey Olsen.

A further four Jersey-based tax professionals have also been invited to meet the MPs and to answer their questions about the finance industry.

They are Greg Branch, Senior Partner at Deloittes; Wendy Dorman, Head of the tax practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers; John Riva, Head of Tax at KMPG Channel Islands; and John Shenton, Tax Director at Ernst & Young.

The MPs are part of a House of Commons Treasury Select Committee which has set up an inquiry into Offshore Financial Centres.

Geoff Cook, chief executive of Jersey Finance Limited, commented:

"We feel this is an extremely useful opportunity to ensure that the MPs conducting this inquiry fully appreciate the work and activity of Jersey’s financial services industry. Whilst this review by MPs is an inquiry into offshore jurisdictions in general and not specifically concerned with Jersey, we nevertheless welcome the opportunity this provides us to answer questions. We have assembled a number of specialists in the field of taxation who will be able to answer some of the specific questions that the MPs have and I am grateful to my senior colleagues for their willingness to participate."

The MPs visiting Jersey are the Rt Hon John McFall (chairman); Nick Ainger, Graham Brady, Andrew Love, Mark Todd and Sir Peter Viggers.

Organisations were invited to write to the inquiry in response to a number of questions posed by the Committee about the nature and role of offshore finance centres and Jersey Finance is one of a number that has already provided a written submission.

Mr Cook added:

"In our written submission, we reaffirmed the Island’s standing as a well respected, top tier international finance centre. We show that the services we offer are complementary to those offered in the City of London and that they are no different from those performed in London, New York and other major onshore finance centres."

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