In a speech at an annual Jersey Finance funds industry event in London, Ozouf did not elaborate on how or when the Latin American promotion by Jersey would take place.
However, afterwards, he said a plan to take Jersey’s financial services marketing roadshow across the Atlantic, following its successful outings to such other developing markets as China, India, Russia and the Middle East, would feature in the Jersey Government’s three-year business plan that is being drawn up over the next few months.
“We have a long-term strategy for growth, and Latin America is part of that,” he added.
Others at the event said it was thought a Jersey delegation could travel to Brazil, and possibly one or more other Latin American countries, as soon as later this year.
In introductory remarks at the start of yesterday’s London Funds Conference, Jersey Finance chief executive Geoff Cook noted that Jersey’s marketing push over the last few years into Hong Kong, Abu Dhabi, Mumbai and Delhi had been so successful “that around 20% of [Jersey’s] banking footprint now comes from developing countries”.
AIFM directive
One of the key topics addressed during the Jersey funds event was the Alternative Investment Fund Management (AIFM) directive, which, Cook said, was continuing “to ebb and flow in terms of our sense of its direction”.
Cook added that he could not recall, in 30 years in financial services, a similar amount of regulation “of substantial nature” arriving all at once, as it has since the 2008 economic downturn.
“If Lehman’s was the earthquake that triggered the financial crisis, [the wave of new regulations] is certainly the tsunami that’s followed,” he told the audience of mainly funds industry executives.
Anthony Hilton, city editor of London’s Evening Standard newspaper and moderator of the conference, followed up on Cook’s observation by noting that he had recently worked out that the current recession is his fifth, and the banking crisis his seventh, since he came to the City of London in 1968.
"And the bad news is that each of those seven banking crises was followed by legislation so it would never happen again," Hilton said.
PPF
Cook was keen to remind the funds industry audience about Jersey’s new private placement fund regime, which came into force in January, and which, he said, has been well received. The new PPF, as it is called, is designed to enable fund managers to bring their closed-ended funds established or managed in Jersey to market quickly, if the funds meet certain eligibility standards set out by Jersey’s regulator, the Jersey Financial Services Commission.
