Forbes- Most people can’t find Jersey on a map. Situated far closer to France than Britain in the English Channel, tourists know it for docile, sad-eyed cows and the clotted cream they produce.Financiers know it for rich, sweet products of another kind.
A lax tax climate and modestly regulated investment policies for the wealthy fuel the island’s financial-services industry, accounting for half the economy. Net assets of funds under management jumped 31.8%, to a record 210 billion pounds ($432 billion) in the year ended June 2007. The island’s 100,000 residents enjoy gross domestic product per capita around $57,000 (compared with $44,000 in the U.S.).
Now Jersey plans to let in the riff-raff, financially speaking, inviting a showdown with other offshore financial hubs like neighboring Guernsey, the Cayman Islands (which has traditionally been more lax in its hedge fund regulation), Bermuda and Luxembourg. In January 2008, the 45-square-mile island–about as big as San Francisco–launches what it calls an Unregulated Funds Regime to encourage funds to locate themselves there. Despite fears that in many quarters, the recent global credit crunch means more regulation of the world’s financial markets, on Jersey, the mantra seems to be “less is more.”
