Category Archives: Business Information

Business Information

Government signs up Jersey in tax agreement

Quoted from HM revenue and Customs:

“Jersey is to join other Crown Dependencies and Overseas Territories as a signatory to a Tax Information Exchange Agreement (TIEA) with the UK. TIEAs play a vital role in HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) drive against offshore avoidance and evasion.

The Financial Secretary to the Treasury, the Rt. Hon Stephen Timms MP said:

“Exchange of information and transparency between countries and territories is vital in combating tax avoidance and evasion. Jersey’s decision to embrace this principle is very welcome and a crucial step in the right direction.

“More countries and territories must now follow Jersey’s example. In coming weeks we will be working with G20 partners to boost global co-operation to address tax evasion. I urge those who have not yet met international standards to think again and start work on the necessary reforms immediately”.

HMRC Permanent Secretary for Tax, Dave Hartnett said:

“The importance of this TIEA with Jersey should not be under-estimated. It will enable us to obtain the information we need to ensure that the days when putting assets off shore provided an unfair tax advantage are well and truly over.”

The text of the agreement is available  on the HMRC website at  http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/international/jersey-eol.pdf and will in due course be laid as Schedules to a draft Order in Council for consideration by the House of Commons.

This is the fifth TIEA signed by the UK and follows the OECD Model Agreement on Exchange of Information on Tax Matters. The UK already has a TIEA in place with Bermuda and signed TIEAs with the Isle of Man, the British Virgin Islands and Guernsey. Jersey has signed TIEAs with the United States, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden and the Faroes.

From a business researcher’s point of view, this doesn’t change the problems we have when looking for information on companies registered in Jersey or the other tax havens mentioned in the press release.

Business Information, Presentations

“Hurricane Obama hits offshore tax havens”

1 Comment

I spotted this article in the hard copy of the Daily Mail while I was on the plane back from Glasgow last night. It particularly caught my attention because we had been discussing International filing and disclosure requirements at the workshop I had been running in Glasgow. According to the article a new bill – the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act 77 – is passing through the US Congress with presidential backing.

The article singles out four regions in particular: Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Cayman Islands, Delaware and the City of London.

Switzerland is in the list because of its “banking secrecy laws”, and Liechtenstein is one of three tax havens listed as uncooperative by the OECD. The other two countries are Monaco and Andorra.

The Cayman Islands should come as no surprise, but I am still amazed at how many analysts and researchers keep asking me why they can’t find any financials or detailed information on companies that are registered there. Just take a look at Cayman Islands Companies: Formation & Registration:

“The Registrar of Companies can only release the name and type of company, its date of registration, the address of the registered office and the company’s status. Disclosing any other information is prohibited unless requested by a law enforcement agency.”

The US state of Delaware is another well known “haven”.  The Delaware Division of Corporations refers to its “modern and flexible corporate laws” and “a business-friendly State Government”. Roughly translated it means that you will have a hard job finding accurate, up to date or sometimes any information on companies registered there.  Many of the companies I have looked up on their register don’t give any proper contact details or give fictitious names. But perhaps Homer and Marge Simpson really are directors of multiple businesses in a wide variety of sectors?

The naming and shaming of the City of London came as a surprise, though. The UK is the last place that most of its citizens would regard as a tax haven but the article is referring to the so called “non-dom” laws. A non-dom, or non-domiciled person, is someone who is resident in the UK but claims it is not their home, their  ‘domicile’ being in another country. As a non-dom they pay no UK tax on their overseas earnings unless they bring the proceeds into the UK. UK Chancellor Alistair Darling’s announcement last year on proposed changes to the tax laws for non-doms caused an uproar and there have been many subseuqent “clarifications” and amendments to the proposals. I won’t bore you with the details here but if you are interested go to Chipwrapper and search on non-dom Alistair Darling and select Past Year as the time slice.

For the majority of us, tax havens will remain a dream. Substantial donations to the author of this blog would be gratefully received – used notes in a suitcase preferred 🙂

Books, Business Information

Russia: All Regions Trade & Investment Guide 3rd Edition

1 Comment

Now in its 3rd edition this guide from CTEC Publishing LLC  is a comprehensive compilation of data for all 83 regions of Russia.

The guide includes:

  • An introduction by the head of each regional administration
  • Economic maps of the regions, brief general information, full contact details for each regional administration including the names and telephone numbers of relevant officials
  • Labour resources, growth dynamics and GRP structure by sectors, regional budgets and biggest banks, current situation and forecasts for industrial production by major sectors, fuel /energy balances, transport infrastructure, agribusiness, natural resources, products, structure and geography for exports and imports.
  • Each region’s demand for investment is presented indicating: capital investment dynamics, including foreign investment; major companies, including those with foreign participation, investment friendly sectors; data on regional privileges and advantages available to investors.

The Guide publishes data on 1000 real investment projects supported by regional administrations.

Further information, sample pages and an order form are available at  http://www.dataresources.co.uk/contents/en-uk/d7.html .  For a limited time the price has been reduced by 20%.

The full price with the 20% discount is  £316.  It is also possible to purchase individual PDF file covering each of the regions at http://www.russiasregions.com/

Business Information

EBRD 2009 Directory of Business Information Sources

11th Edition – New for 2009

January discounts available

Title: EBRD Directory of Business Information Sources on central and eastern Europe and the CIS
Editor: Liz Coles
ISBN: 1874128 31 6
Price: £25.00 January Discount – Pay Only £150.00, EUR 170, $US235 (+ delivery)

Economic, business and political policies adopted in the countries of central and eastern Europe and the CIS following the global economic storm will play a crucial role in European economic recovery.  In the course of its work, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development identifies and evaluates a large volume of business information relevant to the region to monitor the potential and the risks associated with the transition economies of Europe. The EBRD Directory provides access to this wealth of business intelligence both in printed form and on the Internet via a searchable database.

Key Features

  • Gain immediate Internet access to the location of over 3,000 key sources of business information gathered from the world’s leading publishers, banks, commercial and investment agencies.
  • Identify the information sources used daily by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development Business Information Centre.
  • Descriptive summaries, comprehensive indexing and Internet search options aid the selection of sources, with active links to email and web addresses.

Visit www.dataresources.co.uk for full details, sample pages and secure online ordering.

Business Information, News Sources, Uncategorized

Chipwrapper introduces time-slices

2 Comments

One of my favourite news sites, Chipwrapper (http://www.chipwrapper.co.uk/), now offers an option to search for articles within a specified time period. Chipwrapper is a Google custom search engine that covers UK news sources on the Internet. Until now, a drawback  of the service has been the absence of an option to limit  your search by date. You can include a year and/or month in your search but now there are built in options to search for articles published within the past 24 hours, week, month or year.

My earlier review of this excellent service can be found at http://www.rba.co.uk/wordpress/2007/12/29/chipwrapper-search-uk-newspapers/

Business Information

Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts

The Texas Secretary of State is the official office for registering various business entities in Texas, but I have been told that it is not the best source for quick and free information.  The Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts – Taxable Entity Search has basic business entity information including name, status, location, agent, file number, SOS (Secretary of State) registration date, and taxpayer ID.  You can search by file number, tax ID or entity name.

Business Information, Market Research, Statistics

TriMark Publications – Biotechnology, Healthcare and Life Sciences Market Research

TriMark Publications focuses on market research in biotechnology, health care and the life sciences. You can browse reports or search by keyword. The market reports vary in price but there are detailed table of contents and the first three or four pages available free of charge as a sample. However, any figures or data on the pages are blacked out.  It is refreshing, though, to see a detailed listing of what is contained in the reports before you part with significant amounts of money.

Sector Snapshots cost just USD 500 and provide a high-level overview of a particular market sector, including key players, sales data and emerging trends.

Database Tables, costing USD 100 each, are a one-page table of hard-to-find numerical information. They are derived from “a proprietary source” and provide a high-level overview of specific data points in a table format. Database Tables are not reports or comprehensive analyses.

Business Information

African Financials

African Financials is a free Annual Reports portal focusing on investment in Africa. If you need an annual report on an African listed company this is a good place to start. There are 1100 reports and you can browse by sector, year or country. There are also links to CEO blogs and recently added documents. The IPO section lists rumoured, expected, recent, current, archived, cancelled, and postponed IPOs. Some of the IPO documents are available via the Download section.

Business Information

SCoRe: national UK catalogue of printed company reports

SCoRe (Search Company Reports) is a catalogue of printed company reports, both current and historic,  held in UK libraries. The catalogue does not provide links to digitised documents but it is a very quick and easy way of  identifying libraries that hold hard copy reports.  The participating libraries include London Business School, the British Library, Manchester Business School, City Business Library, Guildhall Library, Strathclyde University and the University of Warwick. A full list is available at http://www.score.ac.uk/collections.asp .

Searching is straightforward: simply type in the company name and select a collection, or leave it as the default ‘All’. Non UK companies are also covered and you can restrict your search to a specific country by using the Advanced Search. The results give you name of the company and any variations, for example searching on Cadbury will find results on Cadbury Schweppes, Fry Cadbury, Cadbury Brothers etc. The libraries that hold copies of the reports are listed together with the earliest and latest years of a collection’s holdings.

An added bonus of this service is that it suggests you look at related companies. For example, clicking on Cadbury Brothers Ltd in my results lists came up with British Cocoa and Chocolate Co Ltd, of which Cadbury Brothers was a subsidiary, and Cadbury Schweppes. Cadbury Brothers, it tells me,  later to become Cadbury Group merged with  Schweppes to form Cadbury Schweppes in 1969).  In addition to locating historical annual reports, this service is a good place to pick up clues on past corporate relationships.

Business Information

British Services UK

3 Comments

Owned and operated by Infoactive Media Ltd, British Services UK lists major governing bodies, government departments, associations and resources of over 100 industries in the UK along with non-profit organisations, charities, groups, clubs and businesses. My particular interest in this site was the list of trade associations and regulatory bodies at  http://www.britishservices.co.uk/associations.htm. Trade associations are often an excellent starting point for general information and key resources on industry sectors.

You can browse by service type, for example Trade Associations or Chambers of Commerce,  and narrow down your results by location.  There is no option to browse by industry sector and the absence of a proper site search engine makes it even more difficult to find information. Overall, the coverage of trade associations and regulatory bodies is good but not as comprehensive as the Trade Association Forum.

The search box at the top of the screen fails to pick up any results from the listings and at best only displays advertisements.  You could, of course, use Google Advanced Search to carry out a site search, but this was when I began to suspect the quality of some of the data. A search on my own professional body CILIP, which is also a registered charity, did indeed find the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals but it is listed under Bloomsbury Newspapers along with Benjamin Dent & Co, Northcliffe Newspapers, The Friend Publications and The Spectator.

This site has potential, but the navigation needs to be improved and a working search engine ought to be added. Some of the services are incorrectly listed and there are more comprehensive listings elsewhere. British Services UK has an advantage in that everything is in one place, but use with caution.