Bermuda's International Non-Insurance Businesses, Part 2

Owns a retail park near Lancashire County Cricket Club (LCCC), in UK, site of the famous Old Trafford Test Cricket venue. Objected legally against but lost the court battle against Trafford Council's plans to grant LCCC and development partners Tesco planning permission for a major redevelopment of the ground.

An independent energy company specializing in oil and gas reserves exploration in east and central Africa and the next phase of its development - high impact drilling.

Since 2012. A new Bermuda ILS (Insurance Linked Securities) fund manager, It launched a new $40 million ILS fund aimed at Asian investors. The Asuka ILS Opportunities Fund is to be administered by ILS Fund Services, the joint venture between Bermuda’s Horseshoe and ISIS fund services. Eastpoint Asset Management is backed by Asuka Asset Management. This is the first ILS fund offered by Asuka Asset which began managing assets in 2002 and now oversees approximately $700 million in assets for institutional investors in Japan and Asia.

A premium boutique fund administrator formed in Bermuda in 2007 by experienced hedge fund administration professionals. Also with offices in Dublin, the USA and Singapore from 2009.  A full-service alternative investment fund administration company.

Hedge fund owned by Exodus Equities, which has a multi-million dollar portfolio

Bermuda -headquartered international real estate investor with an interest in the Romania market.

Venture capital company that focuses its activities in Brazil. In 2007 it partnered with Draper Fisher Jurvetson, a San Francisco-based venture capital firm that backed Hotmail and Skype. 

Thistle House, Burnaby Street, Hamilton. Has grown from a one-man operation based in Bermuda to a truly global business serving clients across the world in the space of 13 years. The international online payment, and fraud and data management solutions provider, delivers multi-currency, payment processing and risk management solutions for internet merchants and acquiring banks around the globe.

Beginning essentially as a credit card payment gateway enabling merchants to sell their goods and wares and take payments electronically, the company has expanded its range of services to offering more options outside of the standard MasterCard, Visa and American Express payments to allow people in countries such as Mexico where 80 percent of the population doesn’t have a credit card, to make purchases online. FAC joined forces with Ukash in 2009 to provide its customers with alternative payment options in Europe and emerging online consumer markets from Russia to Brazil. The service enabled FAC’s merchants in the Latin American Caribbean Region, the UK and Europe to accept risk-free cash payments on their website, giving them access to new consumer markets, and allowed consumers to buy securely, anonymously and privately online.

The only local PCI DCS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) certified Payment Gateway in Bermuda.

Bermuda-registered Makes Lexapro, the world's third-best selling antidepressant, sold only in the USA. Has its headquarters and almost 100% of its sales in USA but being Bermuda-registered means it can escape many US taxes via a complex, multi-national tax avoidance structure.

Frontline tanker

A victim of potential fraudulent activities revealed in December 2008 by Mr. Bernard L. Madoff and his investment advisory business, which potentially had a material impact on both direct and indirect investments in the Madoff funds. A press release included: "As at December 15, 2008, GSO1 had a total indirect exposure to this manager of $2.8 million (or c. five percent of NAV) in the discretionary Investment Portfolio. Whilst this situation could potentially have an impact on the NAV of GSO1, the Directors do not foresee it having a significant impact on the overall strategy of GSO1."

Google has a multi-corporate Bermuda presence, part of a corporate structure that is believed by the British UK press to enable the Internet search engine giant to legally avoid hundreds of millions of pounds in UK taxes. In the UK, newspaper The Guardian and TV channel Sky News revealed this in December 2009. The Guardian reported that Google was avoiding £450 million in taxes on its UK advertising. Revenues from customers in Britain are diverted to Google Ireland Ltd., the company's Dublin-based headquarters for its European operations. UK corporation tax is levied at between 28 percent and 30 percent, compared to Ireland's rate of 10 to 25 percent. Google Ireland is owned by Google Bermuda Ltd., according to Richard Murphy, an outspoken critic of tax havens, who wrote the story on Google that was published on the Sky News website in December 2009. For further info see http://finance.yahoo.com/news/pf_article_111093.html 

On December 24 2012 the Royal Gazette in Bermuda quoted a Bloomberg New York report that Google avoided about $2 billion in worldwide income taxes in 2011 by shifting $9.8 billion in revenues into a Bermuda shell company, almost double the total from three years before, filings show. By legally funneling profits from overseas subsidiaries into Bermuda, which doesn’t have a corporate income tax, Google cut its overall tax rate almost in half. The amount moved to Bermuda is equivalent to about 80 percent of Google’s total pretax profit in 2011. The increase in Google’s revenues routed to Bermuda, disclosed in a November 21 filing by a subsidiary in the Netherlands, could fuel the outrage spreading across Europe and in the US over corporate tax dodging. Governments in France, the UK, Italy and Australia are probing Google’s tax avoidance as they seek to boost revenue during economic doldrums. The European Union’s executive body, the European Commission, has advised member states to create blacklists of tax havens and adopt anti-abuse rules. Tax evasion and avoidance, which cost the EU one trillion euros ($1.3 trillion) a year, are “scandalous” and “an attack on the fundamental principle of fairness,” Algirdas Semeta, the EC’s commissioner for taxation, said at a press conference in Brussels. “The tax strategy of Google and other multinationals is a deep embarrassment to governments around Europe,” said Richard Murphy, an accountant and director of Tax Research LLP in Norfolk, England. “The political awareness now being created in the UK, and to a lesser degree elsewhere in Europe, is: It’s us or them. People understand that if Google doesn’t pay, somebody else has to pay or services get cut.” Google said it complies with all tax rules, and its investment in various European countries helps their economies. In the UK, “we also employ over 2,000 people, help hundreds of thousands of businesses to grow online, and invest millions supporting new tech businesses in East London,” the Mountain View, California-based company said in a statement. The Internet search giant has avoided billions of dollars in income taxes around the world using a pair of tax shelter strategies known as the Double Irish and Dutch Sandwich, Bloomberg News reported in 2010. The tactics, permitted under tax law in the U.S. and elsewhere, move royalty payments from subsidiaries in Ireland and the Netherlands to a Bermuda unit headquartered in a local law firm. In 2011, Google reported a tax rate of just 3.2 percent on the profit it said was earned overseas, even as most of its foreign sales were in European countries with corporate income tax rates ranging from 26 percent to 34 percent. At a hearing in November 2012 in the UK, members of Parliament pressed executives from Google, Seattle-based Amazon.com Inc. and Starbucks to explain why they don’t pay more taxes there. The UK, Google’s second-biggest market, was responsible for about 11 percent of its sales, or almost $4.1 billion last year, according to company filings. Google paid 6 million ($9.6 million) in UK income taxes. Matt Brittin, Google’s vice-president for Northern and Central Europe, testified that the company pays taxes where it creates “economic value”, primarily the US. Still, Google attributes some profit based on technology created in the US to offshore subsidiaries, lowering its US taxes, according to company filings and people familiar with its tax planning. Google paid $1.5 billion in income taxes worldwide in 2011. In the wake of the parliamentary hearing, the House of Commons issued a report in December 2012 declaring that multinationals “do not pay their fair share” of tax. The committee also criticised the UK’s tax collection agency, Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs, for “not taking sufficiently aggressive action” and called on the agency to “get a grip” on corporate tax avoidance. A spokesman for HMRC said the agency “ensures that multinationals pay the tax due in accordance with UK tax law”. The French tax authority in 2012 proposed increasing Google’s income taxes by about $1.3 billion. The agency searched Google’s Paris offices in June 2011 and removed computer files as part of an examination first reported by Bloomberg last year. Google is cooperating with French authorities and works with them “to answer all their questions on Google France and our service,” the company said. In Italy, the Tax Police began an audit of Google in November 2012 and recently searched the company’s Milan offices, as well as the offices of Facebook, according to a person familiar with the matter. “It’s very common for companies to be audited, and we have been working closely with the Italian authorities for some time,” Google said. “So far we have not had any demands for additional tax in Italy.” Facebook, based in Menlo Park, California, is cooperating with the Italian tax authority and “we take our obligations under the Italian tax code very seriously,” a company spokeswoman said.

In Google’s case, an Irish subsidiary collects revenues from ads sold in countries like the UK and France. That Irish unit in turn pays royalties to another Irish subsidiary, whose legal residence for tax purposes is in Bermuda. The pair of Irish units gives rise to the nickname “Double Irish”. To avoid an Irish withholding tax, Google channeled the payments to Bermuda through a subsidiary in the Netherlands — thus the “Dutch Sandwich” label. The Netherlands subsidiary has no employees. The Dutch unit’s payments to the Bermuda entity in 2011 were up 81 percent to $9.8 billion from $5.4 billion in 2008. Google’s overseas sales have increased at about the same rate. Google’s overall effective tax rate dropped to 21 percent last year from about 28 percent in 2008. That compares with the average combined US and state statutory rate of about 39 percent.

Explorer of Middle East oil, owner of Shaikan-1 well, located near the Northern Iraqi city of Dihok, which may hold as much as three billion barrels of oil.

Set up by Englishman Bruce Currie in Bermuda in 2001/2002. 

The primary listing is on the Irish Stock Exchange. Incorporated in Bermuda in February 2010 as a limited liability company under the Bermuda Companies Act 1981, as amended, and authorized and registered as a standard fund by the Bermuda Monetary Authority under the Investment Funds Act 2006 of Bermuda. The fund's promoter and investment adviser is Aurum MAM Fund Management Ltd., which holds all general voting shares and controls the fund.

Formed December 2011 by Horseshoe Group (see above) and ISIS Fund Services (see below) as a Bermuda exempted and licensed fund administrator dedicated to funds investing in insurance-linked securities (ILS). Provides a range of services to administer ILS funds including re-launch advisory, portfolio valuation specific to ILS, fund accounting and investor services, financial statement preparation, audit co-ordination, registered office and corporate secretarial services.

Owns rights to Morgan Creek’s international library filed on December 30, 2011 for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. It already had filed in May 2011 for Chapter 15 bankruptcy protection. Under Chapter 15, Inverness was shielded from lawsuits from creditors in the US. The new status will let Inverness, now run by liquidators who were appointed by officials in Bermuda, file lawsuits in the US. Court filings at the time showed that Inverness had liabilities of between $50 million and $100 million and had fewer than 50 creditors. Among the films on which Inverness has foreign rights are “The Last of the Mohicans” and “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.” Inverness was formerly known as Morgan Creek International. From 2004 until the bankruptcy filing its sole stockholder and president was James Robinson. He produced “Ace Ventura”, “Last of the Mohicans”, “Young Guns” and “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.”

A joint venture with Maurice (Hank) Greenberg's CV Starr & Co., Inc. Will write catastrophic excess casualty insurance products, targeting Fortune 2000 and other clients purchasing cat excess coverage. Policy limits up to $75 million will be issued.

Corner House, Parliament Street, Hamilton. The Angolan mining company Sociedade Lumanhe and the directors of this company together make up the mining consortium Sociedade Mineira do Cuango (SMC) in partnership with the state company Endiama. Lincoln Management Limited.

4th floor, Schroders House, Hamilton. US banking giant with a private-equity office in Bermuda. Will close by end of December 2012 with the loss of 16 jobs. Will relocate to Dallas where JP Morgan has similar functions. Eleven full-time employees and five consultants, including three Bermudians, have been given the option to relocate to Dallas or take redundancy packages. The office is JP Morgan’s only business in Bermuda. In April 2010, JP Morgan had acquired the private-equity services operations of Schroders, which was based in Guernsey as well as Bermuda. At the time, it was expected that JP Morgan would keep the private-equity services operation on the Island, working at this office. In July 2009, the company moved its Bermuda-based Hedge Fund Services operations off the Island, with 27 staff impacted.

Since 1969, became part of the Jupiter Group in 1991. A hedge fund management company. In January 2012,  after more than 40 years in Bermuda it closed, letting go all ten employees. According to Citywire UK, Jupiter suffered a net outflow of £225 million in the final three months of 2011 as it took the decision to close its Bermuda-based hedge operation.

Oil and gas exploration and production company owned by Warburg Pincus LLC and Blackstone Group LP. The company has about a 23 percent stake in Ghana’s Jubilee oilfield, the biggest offshore discovery in West Africa in a decade, according to the prospectus.

Since 2010. Corporate recovery, insolvency, forensic accounting and business advisory services. Bermuda office supports the largely cross-jurisdictional nature of its operations in the Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands and Bahamas.

Multi-billion dollar Wall Street investment bank, Bermuda-incorporated and domiciled but not offering banking service in the Bermuda market. Said to be one of the few investment banks to emerge from the sub-prime mortgage meltdown unscathed. Founded as a dry goods business in New Orleans in 1847, it ranks seventh among financial advisers for announced mergers and acquisitions globally in 2009, behind larger Wall Street companies Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Citigroup Inc. and JP Morgan Chase & Co. Operates mostly in New York, London and Paris. In 2011 it hired former British Cabinet Minister Peter Mandelson as a senior adviser. Lord Mandelson, who now sits in the House of Lords, held four different Cabinet posts under the governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, the most recent of which was Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. Lord Mandelson is a member of the House of Lords. He was European Trade Commissioner from 2004 to 2008. Before he entered the UK Parliament he was director of campaigns and communications for the Labour Party between 1985 and 1990. In January 2011 he launched Global Counsel, a strategic advisory firm, of which he is chairman. Lazard has 2,300 employees worldwide and approximately $143.6 billion is assets under management, as of the end of the third quarter 2010.