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Why is the British Virgin Islands a bigger source of foreign direct investment into China than the USA, the European Union and Japan combined? Why is there 10 times more investment from China in the Caymans Islands than there is in the USA? This paper argues that these flows represent the efforts of Chinese and foreign investors to reduce governance and measurement transaction costs. Investors avail themselves of efficient institutions in offshore centers that are absent locally. These institutional attractions include the ease of raising capital on foreign stock markets, access to reliable courts, and more flexible and sophisticated financial products. Existing explanations of these capital movements, characterizing them as criminal money or tax arbitrage, are insufficient. Evidence is drawn from government statistics, private legal advice and interviews in offshore financial centers. (Pac Rev/GIGA)

In the article investigated problems that can generate offshore financial centers and events sent to adjusting of activity of such centers. Essence, terms of activity, classification of world offshore financial centers, is considered. Drawn conclusion that Ukraine also must set forth the legal position through this question.

The origins of the world-wide distributed Offshore Financial Centers are related to the surge of the Eurocurrency markets during the 1950s and 1960s. After a first stage of rapid expansion, many of those OFCs reached a consolidation stage and remained, even after most of the original drivers for their creation were no longer present. Their insertion as part of the complex mechanisms of the global financial markets is driven by the high skilled financial services as well as the usually benign fiscal treatment the host countries give to multinational institutions established in their territory. As a consequence of the 2007-2009 Financial Crisis, the more advanced nations have formed a new group called the G20, with the aim to improve the coordination of different dimensions of the international economic environment. In its first reunions the G20 have focused in discussing the changes that are needed at the level of the financial architecture and the regulations that apply to international financial markets, with the intention to minimize the probability of another episode of financial crisis in the future. The changes that are likely to follow the G20 initiatives will change the operating conditions and affect the competitive advantages of the OFCs, but will also represent new opportunities for business. This work briefly explores the historical background of the OFCs phenomenon, analyzes its current situation and discusses its likely future trends, based on the OFCs' most recent environmental changes.

AbstractQuestion/issueThis is a study of the relationship between nonexecutive director personal ownership and firm's bid ask spreads in listed firms from across the Caribbean offshore securities exchanges.Research findings/insightsWe report that bid ask spreads increase with nonexecutive ownership. However, this result is reduced (negatively moderated) in the context of higher formal institutional quality and also if the territory has a fixed exchange rate regime but exacerbated (positively moderated) if the firm is located within an offshore jurisdiction.Theoretical/academic implicationsThe results regarding the influence of nonexecutive director ownership on firm liquidity‐based transaction costs, namely, market estimates of bid ask spreads, are interpreted in terms of the contingency of this relationship on the wider institutional context. The effectiveness of nonexecutive directors is highly contingent upon the specific institutional context. Higher formal institutional quality and the presence of a strong macroeconomic tie between territory and Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) country lead to a reduction in these costs, while offshore financial centers lead to their increase. We argue that this highlights a shortcoming of agency theory's more limited view of institutions.Practitioner/policy implicationsThe results support regulator's focus on board of director composition and in particular nonexecutive remuneration in the form of ownership. Given the increasing dominance of Anglo‐American governance, firms worldwide are increasing the proportions of nonexecutive directors on their boards. However, their role is acutely context specific which is reflected in the relationship between their personal ownership and the liquidity‐borne transaction costs of the firm as a whole.