Swiss hope low taxes can lure London bankers

SWITZERLAND HAS started to invite London-based financiers to its embassy in London to persuade them to move their operations to Geneva and escape higher tax rates and bonus curbs, it has emerged.

The embassy’s efforts began after the British government’s decision to increase the top tax rate to 50 per cent next April, but have intensified following the curbs placed on bonuses last week by the chancellor, Alistair Darling.

A major London-based estate agents, Savills, has begun, in conjunction with the embassy, to put together information packages about Swiss homes and schools for those considering quitting the City.

Meanwhile, the Jersey authorities have launched a similar campaign, but “only as a defensive reaction in the face of what the Swiss are doing”, chief executive of Jersey Finance Geoff Cook told The Irish Times.

Fifty top-ranking traders with hedge fund BlueCrest are moving to Geneva, while a fifth of all top financiers in London surveyed in a Tenon poll have said they are intending to quit London for Monte Carlo, Guernsey and the Cayman Islands.

Tenon’s head of tax, Andrew Jupp, said the wealthiest are the ones most likely to move: “Those running medium-sized businesses are tied in to the UK, with employees and premises here.

“But the very richest, who work for multi-national drug firms or merchant banks, or indeed hedge firms, can switch domiciles far more easily. Their kids are often at boarding schools, and they can fly them to and from the new overseas base for half term,” he said.

The fears of an exodus from the City of London were heightened after Mr Darling announced earlier this year that those earning over £150,000 a year will pay 50 per cent tax, but they were worsened by London’s doubts about upcoming EU financial regulations.

“Bankers and financiers are now sustaining vilification, particularly from politicians who are using the situation to deflect from their own fundamental structural problems,” Mr Cook said.

Hedge funds are particularly concerned by the European Commission’s alternative investment fund managers (AIFM) directive, which could force them to set aside larger amounts of capital and to seek clearance from Brussels before increasing borrowing.

The directive, which could be enforced as early as June, is expected to have a deeper effect in London than in any of the European financial centres since over 80 per cent of the alternative investment industry is based there.

The trickle away from London began a year ago, according to a review of Companies House records. The number of directors of British businesses registered as living in Jersey, Guernsey or the Isle of Man rose by 500 to 6,729 in the past 12 months.

The British Virgin Islands in the Caribbean is also popular, with 615 directors of British companies now based there – an 18 per cent rise on a year ago, according to figures published by the Sunday Telegraph. One hundred London-based executives have transferred to Jersey since the global crash began and the numbers expressing interest in following has risen sharply in recent weeks.

In a new marketing brochure, which declares that “in Jersey, you keep more of what you earn”, the island makes much of its 20 per cent income tax and 10 per cent corporation tax rates, along with a complete absence of inheritance and capital gains taxes.

Mr Cook insisted that Jersey is not seeking to damage the City. He said Jersey has been for many years part of the City machinery, but admitted, “we have detected a considerable degree of unsettlement there over the last 12 months”. Fifteen major companies, he said, have already shifted operations to Switzerland, while 20 more “are in the pipeline. Our campaign is a defensive reaction to the actions of the Swiss”.

Mr Cook said there is no evidence that Irish bankers are considering a move to Jersey.