More than two dozen Jersey bankers, lawyers and accountants were among guests at a reception in Hong Kong last night to mark the opening of Jersey Finance’s first overseas office in the former British colony.
This is designed to increase the business Jersey has been doing with wealthy residents of Hong Kong and the region for many years, but also – perhaps more significantly – it will act as a springboard into China, which in a couple of years is expected to be the biggest economy in the world.
The significance of the Hong Kong event was shown by the attendance of more than ten per cent of Jersey Finance’s member firms. Many of them also attended a conference in Singapore at the beginning of the week at which several expert speakers claimed that more highly taxed nations ‘were out to destroy’ the Channel Islands’ tax advantages.
