Anxious eyes in Jersey . . . and elsewhere

This from the Jersey Evening Post today:

"SENIOR finance industry figures are keeping a close eye on developments in America amid concern that Barack Obama may act on his threat to ‘shut down’ offshore jurisdictions.

Stephen Platt, the chairman of local law firm BakerPlatt and an international finance expert, said that the Illinois senator’s accession to the White House could make life very difficult for offshore centres like Jersey. And he warned that his victory should set ‘alarm bells ringing’.

Geoff Cook, chief executive of Jersey Finance, said that he was ‘apprehensive’. During his campaign, Obama said: ‘I shall shut down those offshore tax havens and corporate loopholes as President, because you shouldn’t have to pay higher taxes because some big corporations cut corners to avoid paying theirs.’

He was speaking in support of the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act, a bill that names Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man as ‘offshore secrecy jurisdictions’ which have helped American citizens and businesses evade US tax. It proposes to take very tough action against such jurisdictions and those who use them."

They are right to be anxious. Financial services is the only serious export earner on the islands, and Jersey is probably more vulnerable than any other tax haven to external interventions like this. The islands' government has pursued a tax haven policy for the last 30 years, and having all the eggs in one basket, they don't have a Plan B to fall back on. We recently wrote about the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act, here. Note from that blog that Jersey is mentioned by name.

Postscript: they seem to be worried in Switzerland, the Isle of Man and Liechtenstein, Bermuda, and Gibraltar too. And in a fair few other places. More on that later. And note these comments now from French President Nicolas Sarkozy, framing a common European position:

"There is a pretty detailed common position from Europe. . .We will be defending a common position, a vision ... for restructuring our financial system. . . . All countries agreed with this need. All have agreed with the need to take firm and ambitious operational decisions at the Washington summit. . . .We talked about the need to combat tax havens. . . .We want to change the rules of the game in the financial world."