Ethics and governance in the European Financial centers

KPMG’s recent study among 224 banks from 55 countries found that banks’ spending on anti-money laundering (AML) systems and processes has risen by an average of 58 percent over the last three years. In North America and in the Middle East and Africa, spending has increased by 70 percent or more. These increases are far in excess of banks’ own predictions when KPMG Forensic carried out its last study in 2004, when respondents on average predicted an increase of 43 percent. The biggest spending continues to be on transaction monitoring and staff training costs.

See press release

See the study

Senator Barack Obama said a couple of days ago that :

It’s time to shed some sunlight not only on companies that abuse the tax code, but also on the secretive offshore tax havens that shelter them

Know more

Through an annual dialogue, the Liechtenstein Government has established a high-quality contact platform which brings together personalities from finance, economics, business, politics, science and the media to discuss critically and controversially themes relevant to financial markets.

The Dialogue 2007 will look at the needs of an innovative financial industry and the actions taken by financial centers to meet those needs, as well as the resulting challenges for the regulatory environment in the future. Under the title Navigating change: Success strategies for financial centers, this year’s conference will shed light on three major questions:

The first conference day (4 October 2007) will shed light on the following two major questions:

What are the needs of an innovative financial industry?
Identifying particularly promising businesses and products, and formulating the requirements in terms of regulatory frameworks and government behavior to capitalize on them.
What are financial centers doing to respond?
Showing how successful financial centers have been shaping their environments and regulatory frameworks to become attractive partners to the business community.

The second conference day (5 October 2007) will shed light on the following major question:

What are the challenges for regulators in the future?
Formulating appropriate regulatory reactions in various areas (such as taxation, company law, and market supervision) to greater competition among financial centers and the heightened demands of an innovative, globalized business community.



Lucien Thiel who used to be the General Manager for the Luxembourg Bankers' Association (ABBL) will represent the Luxembourg financial Center . He will take part in the panel discussion on "How can privacy survive in an environment of increasing information exchange?" on Friday, 5 October 2007. The basic objective of the panel is to discuss the (potential) area of conflict between the protection of legitimate privacy rights on the one hand and a comprehensive (cross-border) information exchange on the other hand.

Handouts & Presentations will be published later on this blog when available.



See agenda

Website of The Liechtenstein Dialogue