BVI Presented as Top Financial Centre at China Offshore Summit

British Virgin Islands was named the most important and most preferred offshore jurisdiction in the Asia Pacific, already for the sixth year. The survey was conducted inside and outside the region, and in respondents’ opinion BVI remains the undisputed market leader in the financial services industry.

At the 2015 China Offshore Summit, which was held in Shanghai on November 4-5, CEO of Vistra Group Martin Crawford made a presentation on behalf of BVI Finance. He said that the BVI territory held about 50 percent of the market share of new offshore companies formed globally and, of the active companies on the BVI’s registry, about 60 percent were from Asian clients. He stated that in the Global Financial Centres Index the BVI is ranked at the top of the most competitive offshore financial centres, and named some factors that help BVI remain the leader, among them legal and commercial certainty, and robust regulatory standards, being focused on “value-added” rather than pure volume.

Additionally, Crawford said that the top ten listed companies on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and the Shanghai Stock Exchange had BVI subsidiaries.

Presentations were also made for the BVI at the Summit by group legal counsel at AMS Financial Group, Barry Mitchell, director of BVI House Asia, Elise Donovan, and managing partner in China of Harney, Westwood and Riegels, Kristy Calvert. China Offshore Summit was attended by more than 500 Chinese business leaders.