Financial centres need one voice says economist

(Royal Gazette): International financial centres will not survive unless they join forces to create a united body to articulate the benefits they provide the global economy. That is the view of Professor Gilbert Norris, who gave an outspoken speech on the first day of the Society of Trust and Estates Practitioners (STEP) Caribbean Conference (in Bermuda) yesterday. Norris, the chief economist of the Caribbean Basin Review in Sao Paulo and author of the book ‘Shifting Ground: The G20 Pogrom against International Financial Centres’, told delegates that smaller countries were not being treated equally in international law.

IFCs had made a great contribution to global financial stability, but this message was not getting across to larger countries because there was no organisation giving IFCs a unified voice, he said.

“It’s time for IFCs to grow up and really be part of the global financial system,”Mr Norris said.”What international organisations can we influence? You can’t play in this game at this level and have no institutional and tactical ground beneath you. If we don’t have that, we cannot survive. What I believe IFCs need is an international body, founded in law.”

Go to article