The world is beginning to unite behind The Tax Justice Network’s themes:
Freer, more open and better integrated financial markets have benefited people and companies around the world. They have lowered the cost of capital and encouraged greater competition in the provision of financial services. But they have also facilitated distortions such as money laundering and [...]
These are my links for January 25th:
London Stock Exchange - Article - Tax ‘causing funds to flow overseas’ - It’s hard to credit how barking mad this is. When someone is stealing from you do you operate an open door policy until you are reduced to poverty, or tackle the thief head on? The LSE [...]
The prime minister wrote in the FT yesterday, in a link up with Davos. He said (and I quote only in part):
Most political and business leaders gathered at the World Economic Forum this week agree on one thing: the global economy is facing its biggest test in more than a decade.
But we should also agree [...]
There’s a lot of what I might politely call guff being written today about the stock market fall on Monday being the sole fault of the rogue trader at Societe General of whom I wrote yesterday.
I don’t buy that. Of course, on the day Societe General may have rocked the boat. But the fault was [...]
The FT reports that:
Friends Provident, the beleaguered life assurer, is moving closer to announcing a break-up and will unveil the results of a strategic review next week.
If only it had remained as a mutual this would not be happening.
I will mourn its passing if that happens. It’s another great Quaker company brought low by the [...]
Accountancy Age has reported that accountants PKF have warned the draft legislation amending the tax position of non-domiciles will hit all non-domiciled people whether they have been here 60 years or 60 seconds. They said:
[T]he legislation was particularly likely to hit those with investments held in offshore trusts and companies where past income and gains [...]
The FT reports that:
Seven former Citibank employees have been charged by the Singapore government with breaking client confidentiality laws in a case that reflects fierce recruitment competition among private banks and Singapore’s need to uphold tough bank secrecy rules.
Read the article and you’ll see that this is really a commercial dispute about people switching jobs.
Now, [...]
These are my links for January 24th:
FT.com / Companies / Financial services - Banks pressed to bail-out bond insurers - I don’t believe they will though - it’s always the state that bails out failing markets. Which is why the state should have a bigger say in markets
FT.com / In depth - Turmoil puts big [...]
The BBC reports that:
French bank Societe Generale says it has uncovered “massive” fraud by a Paris-based trader which resulted in a loss of 4.9bn euros ($7.1bn; £3.7bn).
This is four times the Barings loss that brought that bank down. Societe General will have to raise capital to make good the loss, which it claims was the [...]
US banks have, appropriately, taken the brunt of the sub-prime crisis. They did, after all, pretty much create it. To survive they’ve been issuing massive chucks of new equity to sovereign funds, in the main.
Except, this isn’t equity when it comes to tax. As Jesse Drucker, a journalists on the Wall Street Journal reports:
Both Citigroup [...]
