Financial Transparency Coalition

I presented the new report I have written for a range of NGOs entitled ‘Investment for Development: Derailed to Tax Havens’ in Bergen last evening. I did so sitting next to Kjell Roland, the Managing Director of NorFund – the Norwegian Development Finance Institution. Kjell said to the audience present he imagined that Norfund could sign up straight away to the Coe of Conduct I have proposed. I hope it does. I hope it leads the way in persuading others to do so.

The above comment has just been made by a senior government official at the Task Force conference in Bergen. How right he is. And he followed up by saying that if the three premises of economics are wrong – there is imperfect information, high transaction costs and irrationality – then making clear what we’re saying combats these failures by reducing asymmetry of information is vital. And transparency he says is key – and reiterates a point I make often – this is because we will all be better off with it. But this requires a change in broader mindset which government won’t...

I spoke at the launch of a new report I have written last evening in Bergen, Norway. The report is entitled ‘Investments for Development: Derailed to Tax Havens’. The report focuses on the use of tax havens / secrecy jurisdictions as investment conduits by Development Finance Institutions (DFIs). They are state owned companies located in European companies that invest their capital in developing countries for the express purpose of advancing development in those places by promoting investment in local business. The best known in the UK is CDC plc, formerly the Commonwealth Development Corporation. DFI activities can...

I am at the conference of the Task Force on Financial Integrity and Economic Development in Bergen for the next couple of days. I’ll be talking on at least a couple of issues – country-by-country reporting being one of them, this morning. It’s in that context that the debate on the relocation of Wolseley plc in the Uk is interesting. As the Guardian reports this morning( apart from quoting this blog, from yesterday):

finance director John Martin said the government needed to end the uncertainty surrounding the taxation of profits in foreign subsidiaries to...