Guernsey Report 2020

We leave 2020, a year which will certainly go down in history for all the wrong reasons, with the world perhaps a more uncertain and complex place than ever before.

But taking a global view from Guernsey, I am encouraged that I can reflect on our core strengths of stability, security, and substance being ideally suited for these times.

Our research over the last couple of years has highlighted that these are the strengths that investors and clients consider to be important, and Guernsey scores exceptionally highly on these issues. Despite the COVID headwinds, we have seen the “flight to quality” continue in 2020. So, despite COVID restrictions, we market ourselves, promote ourselves, and continue to develop product with a specific focus designed to facilitate the migration of funds, their managers, and limited partners.

The global Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) movement, driven by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), was motivated by a desire to stop multinational corporations, particularly global technology firms, from artificially structuring their affairs to avoid corporate tax.

A spill-over of all of this, as we are very well aware of now, was the transportation of the issue across to financial centres where, frankly, it was largely redundant.  Financial centres worldwide  scrambled to introduce economic substance legislation – requiring relevant economic activities to be conducted within the jurisdiction of registration – which  led to some getting caught in the firing line.