Finance Malta recently led a four-day delegation to New York for a series of meetings, workshops and presentations to market the island as a European finance centre.
Among the events organised in collaboration with members and third parties was a breakfast for hedge fund managers in Manhattan. Held in collaboration with HFM Week, the event, with a panel discussion, also doubled as a valuable networking opportunity.
Finance Malta chairman Kenneth Farrugia put forward the European argument to an audience of some 120 attendees.
Bruno L’ecuyer, Finance Malta’s head of development, said North America was one of the key 2011 markets the public-private partnership sought to explore with the support of domestic practitioners.
“Our trip was timed to coincide with the ratification of the Malta-USA double tax agreement which rubber stamps Malta as an approved jurisdiction by the US government,” he added. “With that, interest in Malta as a reputable jurisdiction and European financial centre is increasing, making this trip even more important in ensuring that the right message about Malta is communicated.”
Malta’s growing reputation as a diverse and healthy financial services jurisdiction in the Mediterranean is proving attractive to international investors, particularly fund managers as the trend to move funds onshore into well-regulated jurisdictions accelerates.
The island now offers the fund industry in America an advantageous EU and eurozone location with access to markets across the bloc. With more than 105 new funds set up in Malta in 2009, this brings the total to 400 UCITS/hedge funds with a combined asset value of €6.5 billion registered in Malta in June 2010; 47.3 per cent of those funds are being administered in Malta rather than administered outside Malta.
A number of re-domiciliations have taken place into Malta from the Cayman, and British Virgin Islands, previously standard choices for US managers.
KPMG Malta tax partner Juanita Brockdorff, who also joined the delegation, said: “Now that the Malta-US double tax treaty has come into force, Americans feel at ease in seriously considering Malta’s potential as an EU financial centre. The response to our presence in NYC has been warm and, dare I say, promising.”
Recent international attestations demonstrate Malta’s growing attractiveness as a European financial centre. In January, the MFSA continued to subject its regulatory structures to international scrutiny.
As a result, both the World Bank and the IMF gave Malta’s financial system a highly positive assessment. Last November, Allianz SE, a Brussels-based research institute, singled out Malta and Germany as the only two EU member states which, in the past five years, have boosted their competitiveness and fiscal stability according to a scoreboard of debt, labour, productivity and trade indicators published by Allianz.
In the same month, Fitch, the ratings agency, affirmed Malta’s short-term IDR at ‘F1’ and Country Ceiling at ‘AAA’ – a common country ceiling rating for the euro area. This triple A rating was driven by a number of interesting factors for Malta: a smooth passage through the recession, limited fiscal damage, demonstrable financial sector resilience, and signs of a strong economic recovery.