The Bank for International Settlements, the central bank to the world’s banks which is based in Switzerland, says that US banks are increasingly putting their money deposits offshore ‘primarily vis-à-vis the Cayman Islands and Jersey’.
he BIS quarterly review – which has been reporting Jersey deposits separately from the United Kingdom since the end of 2001 – says total deposits in offshore centres totalled US$1.
trillion in the second quarter of 2003, with £601 billion coming from banks in the US.
hree consecutive quarters of relatively large increases in US deposits offshore have established the US banking sector as the biggest user of offshore centres, says the report.
live Jones, chairman of the Jersey Finance Industry Association and the chairman and managing director of Citibank (Channel Islands) Ltd, said he did not find the latest figures especially surprising.
‘It is a helpful factual endorsement of what we have always said – that a well-regulated and reputable tax-neutral jurisdiction is attractive to international institutions.
1411December2003
