Finance industry to gaze into its crystal ball

THE future of the island's finance industry will be discussed next week. The Institute of Financial Services is holding a debate at St James with a panel including Guernsey International Business Association chairman Bob Moore and Institute of Directors chairman Advocate Ian Kirk.

Chief Minister Laurie Morgan will introduce and open the debate and Commerce and Employment minister Stuart Falla and Jonathan Conder, a partner at Macfarlane's in London, will also speak.

'The rationale or driver behind this is that we wanted to make a genuine attempt to look into the future of the finance industry in the widest sense,' said co-organiser and compere for the evening Julian Parker, a former IFS president and current committee member.

He said the idea was to assess what everybody wanted the future to look like, what it could be like if nothing was done and what needed to be done to get it to where everybody wanted it to go.

Mr Parker said the concept of such a debate was around before the issue of corporate tax reform in 2008 came into the headlines.

'We do not want it to hog the floor. It is a pertinent issue today but we have now reached a position in the debate where we believe that a regime will be in place that will be internationally competitive and we are now looking how to fill the tax shortfall,' said Mr Parker.

'If a competitive regime is not achieved, then in a relatively short period of time, the industry might begin to fall away.

'We believe it will be achieved and the aim of the debate is to look beyond that to what the industry will be like in five, 10 and 20 years' time.'

Mr Parker, who is helping to organise the debate along with IFS president Nigel Cashin and president-elect Alan Bougourd, said that the views of Mr Conder were particularly important.

'We definitely want this to be an outward-looking event rather than navel gazing,' said Mr Parker.

He said that the lawyer was directly involved in advising investors which jurisdictions to choose.

He said that with this insight, Mr Conder would be able to explain why people pick Guernsey, why they did not and how the island could improve.

'People are giving us business and we want to know what the drivers for that are and how we can improve still further. Equally there are times when the island does not even get past the thought process so we want to know what prompts us to be excluded and what can we do about it,' said Mr Parker.

He said that the IFS usually had a programme of different events throughout the year, including lunchtime speakers.

'This is a different type of event, still professional but clearly more significant,' said Mr Parker.

He said that a major debate on the future of the finance industry had been something he had looked at five or so years ago for his term as president.

It then came back on the agenda about 18 months ago during the term of then-president Chris Robinson.

A year ago, Mr Cashin thought about it but they were unable to fit it in, then six months ago it returned to the fore as an issue.

The event is on Tuesday with a 4.30pm start and an approximate 6.30pm finish.

It will be attended by Lt-Governor Sir Fabian Malbon and Bailiff Geoffrey Rowland.

Also on the panel will be GuernseyFinance chairman Jim Gilligan and Steve Le Page, of the Guernsey Society of Chartered and Certified Accountants.

There will be a series of mini presentations

and speaker-specific questions followed by general questions, either previously submitted or from the floor.

More than 200 people have already registered to attend and more are expected to swell that number.

* Admission is free but people have to register by emailing Julie.de.la.cour@hsbcpb.com

Anyone wishing to submit a question should send it to the same address.