Mediaboss Marketing

15 May 2012

The Cayman Islands government has sought to bolster business relations with Brazilian investors by taking part in the recent Brazil Investment Summit.

The government said the event presented the opportunity to hold meetings with private equity and institutional investors and provide valuable insight into how the Cayman Islands is perceived internationally, and what policy makers could do to maximize the territory's potential to act as a conduit to investment flows to Brazil.

During the visit, meetings were held with members of Brazil's private sector, key industry associations, including the Brazilian Alternative Investment Managers Association, and representatives from the Portuguese and American Chambers of Commerce.

A team from the government hosted a booth at the summit to offer information on the financial services products being offered from the islands, including in the maritime and aviation spheres.

Welcoming the success of the event, Cayman Premier and Minister for Finance, Tourism and Development, McKeeva Bush, stated: The government has given the Ministry of Finance a mandate to focus energies on emerging economies such as Brazil. Our private sector has long established strong links with Brazil. It is important that we do our part to ensure that the Cayman Islands service providers remain the service providers of choice for the facilitation of Brazilian investment flows.

The Cayman Islands is one of the top five jurisdictions in the world for investment in and out of Brazil, according to 2010 data from the International Monetary Fund. Dr Dax Basdeo of the Cayman Islands Ministry of Finance said that inward portfolio and direct investment flows amount to USD27bn annually, while outward flows amount to nearly USD40bn.

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Cayman Islands Target Brazilian Investors

Ontarians more stressed than other regions about the thought of retiring with debt Nearly six in ten Ontario homeowners indicate they would continue to work if they reached their planned retirement age and still had debt Manulife Bank surveyed 2,003 Canadians Audio clip and infographic attached

TSX/NYSE/PSE: MFCSEHK:945

Retiring from Debt in Ontario (CNW Group/Manulife Financial Corporation)

WATERLOO, ON, May 14, 2012 /CNW/ - Ninety per cent of Ontario homeowners indicate that "being debt-free" is very important to their definition of a successful retirement, according to a recent debt and retirement survey conducted by Manulife Bank of Canada . This is second only to "good health" (95%), and slightly higher than "sufficient retirement income to maintain my current lifestyle" (84%).

Ontarians are also more concerned about the thought of reaching their planned retirement age with debt still outstanding than are other Canadians. Fifty-seven per cent of Ontarians indicated that they would find this scenario extremely stressful, compared to 46 per cent of homeowners from the rest of Canada .

Forty-three per cent of Ontario homeowners who are neither debt free nor retired indicate that they will place a greater emphasis on debt repayment over retirement savings over the next 12 months. Only eight per cent stated the reverse, further reinforcing the high priority Ontario homeowners place on debt-freedom for their retirement.

This is the first time that Manulife Bank focused on surveying Canadians about debt in the context of retirement planning. Manulife Bank has increased the sample size to allow for regional-specific data demonstrating similarities and differences in how Canadians view debt across the country.

"Most people think about savings as the key financial consideration for retirement," stated Mike Gentile , a Chartered Financial Consultant & President of Personalized Investment Planning Inc. in Kitchener, Ontario. "But debt-freedom is a critical consideration for Ontarians, and they find the idea of retiring with debt extremely stressful. An experienced Financial Advisor employs tools such as Cash Flow Analysis and Financial Planning Concepts to assist clients in reducing their debts while giving them an opportunity to increase their tax advantaged savings."

Across Canada , debt-freedom expectations change as people get older

Manulife Bank's debt and retirement survey found that three in four Canadian homeowners consider debt-freedom to be among their top financial goals - a finding that is relatively consistent with Manulife Bank's past consumer debt studies. However, their expectation about when they will actually achieve debt-freedom appears to be largely dependent upon their age, a finding that is consistent across the country.

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For Ontarians, a Successful Retirement Requires a Debt Freedom Plan

A sign on a large beachfront home had a couple of our readers irate, so perturbed they snapped a picture and emailed it to us.

The sign read, Show us your um, bare chest.

I suspect it wasnt intended for me or any other man and has long been one of the most popular Bike Week catch phrases.

Kindly distribute this to our town leaders, the email read. Not only do we residents and property owner have to endure the noise and loose [sic] our sleep but now the children are effected [sic]. I would like to know how this promotes a family beach. Looks like greed of sales tax is more important than our values.

The use of the word values is instructive, because I sympathize with the sentiment.

I have two small kids who are as inquisitive as they come.

And they notice everything everything.

A sign like that is unlikely to miss their notice. What type of values am I trying to instill? And do signs such as this make that more difficult?

Im raising them along the Grand Strand, one of the nations most popular resort areas.

Though this is our place of residence for 365 days of the year, for about 14 million tourists, it is the devils playground a few days or weeks every summer season.

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Issac J. Bailey | Bike rallies demonstrate our freedom to get on each other’s nerves

Proponents of an American nanny state have a plan to improve your health: tax sugar and junk food so you will eat less of it. Subsidies for broccoli and beets are close behind. These plans for bureaucrats and politicians to remake your diet are bad news for four reasons.

First, it is no ones business but yours what you eat. The freedom to eat a slice of apple pie might not sound quite as stirring as freedom of speech, but the ability to choose how to live our lives is the most fundamental freedom. What you eat is no ones business but yours.

Second, even if the government has a role to play in guiding our dietary choices, efforts at restructuring Americans lives via the tax code are fundamentally flawed.

This strategy has given us a tax system of unimaginable complexity: the Internal Revenue Code is almost 10 million words long, and if you stacked IRS regulations into a pile theyd be more than a foot tall. The leading publication for tax professionals takes up nine feet of shelf space. And that doesnt count the tens of thousands of pages of laws and regulations concerning sales, use, property, excise, and other taxes levied by all layers of government.

Taxes need to be simple and easy to administer. As tax laws get fatter, they clog our economic arteries and stifle economic growth. Trying to fine tune Americans diets via a junk food tax will further fatten the tax laws, and the wallets of accountants and tax lawyers. If there are any Americans unaware that sugar and potato chips are fattening despite our $35 billion per year diet industry we dont need a tax to enlighten them, just some public service announcements.

Third, the governments record on dietary control is problematic. The federal government has been involved in the sugar market since the War of 1812. Nanny staters promise that this time theyll get things right but if they havent managed to do so in 200 years, why should we believe them now?

The details of official rules are written in back rooms in Congress and government agencies. When those details are drafted, those best able to influence the results are the lawyers and lobbyists for special interest groups.

For sugar, thats the manufacturers of high fructose corn syrup and the 17 domestic sugar cane producers that reap millions of dollars annually under our current agricultural subsidies and sugar tariffs not you and me.

Finally, the nanny state brigade promises to spend the extra tax money on subsidies for healthy foods and lifestyles. New York Times columnist Matt Bittman enthuses about money for gyms, pools, jogging and bike trails, Meals on Wheels for the elderly, Head Start programs for children, and supermarkets and farmers markets.

If we examine the governments record in spending the billions of dollars from state governments lawsuits against tobacco companies, we can see that this is pure fantasy.

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‘Bad food’ taxes would help clog our economic arteries

A new gambling law in Spain will make it harder for British expats to have a flutter.

Expats will be barred from playing poker with fellow English-speakers internationally, while those who enjoy virtual bingo are likely to be frustrated in Spain.

From June 1, only companies with a Spanish government-issued licence and an .es domain will be allowed to run online gambling sites in the country.

The previous Socialist Party government passed a new gambling law last year that introduced the new rules, but the implementation of this was delayed when they lost power to the Popular Party in November (Stuttgart: A0Z24E - news) .

The new law doesnt, however, cover bingo, meaning those whove taken to substituting the UKs bingo halls for a bit of a flutter online will be out of luck. It has not been banned but the legal assumption is that if it isn't on the list of regulated products, it isn't legal.

While sports betting is permitted under the new law, live in-play betting has been excluded and there has been speculation that the regulation of betting exchanges such as that run by Betfair will be delayed.

Poker players will also lose out, as while the game is covered by the new law, the player pool is restricted to Spain and it will no longer be possible to take part in international games or tournaments.

Willem van Oort, chief executive of GranViaOnline , a marketing agency specialising in the Spanish online gaming market, said many British expats wont be interested in some of the sites on offer post-regulation. These people play on the UK-based sites and because of their residence they wont be able to do this anymore. They might not be interested in Spanish language poker or casino.

There are a number of expat high rollers living on the coast. But they may find it more difficult as the land-based companies who will now be setting up websites in Spain dont really understand these people, said van Oort.

While the law was on hold, a transition period allowed companies that had not applied for licences to keep operating. However, these firms will now have to withdraw from the market if they remain unlicensed Unibet , for example, has said that it plans to stop operating in Spain from this week.

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Spanish 'ban' online bingo