The Offshore Finance Centres

An offshore financial centre is a relatively new term loosely defined as “a low-tax, lightly regulated jurisdiction [that] specializes in providing the corporate and commercial infrastructure to facilitate the use of that jurisdiction for the formation of offshore companies and for the investment of offshore funds.” The word “offshore” comes from the fact that most of these types of financial centres are former British colonies, and at one time were geographically “off” of England’s “shores.”

Offshore finance centres, also known as offshore jurisdictions, are typically characterized by low or no taxes for corporations; extreme attention to privacy in financial dealings; the number of companies owned by foreigners outnumbers those owned by its citizens; and a disproportionate amount of assets from outside its jurisdiction.

Offshore financial centres include: