This paper presents the Offshore-Intensity Ratio – a simple and straightforward way to identify which countries and jurisdictions could be seen as offshore financial centres (OFCs). By setting the aggregated amount of external capital booked in a jurisdiction in relation to the size of its domestic economy, we get a ratio that expresses the strength with which the particular jurisdiction has acted as a magnet for foreign capital. Sixteen jurisdictions are identified as probable OFCs, including the Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands, Bermuda and Luxembourg, but also Ireland and the Netherlands. A novel visualization shows the role of the largest offshore centres in contemporary global finance.

This article argues that a nexus exists between private profit-orienteded actors (privateers and hedge funds) — being only lightly regulated by their home countries (Britain and America) — and ‘offshore’ territories located in the Caribbean and elsewhere in the Anglo-Saxon world. This article argues that the ultimate reason for this nexus is the common ‘Lockean’ state/society complex of the UK and the US. The analysis of hedge funds as privateers reveals that both benefit at the expense of others, while the geographic regions in which they are based are virtually the same — London and New York/Boston. Furthermore, this article shows that the hedge fund ‘value chain’ is clearly dominated by the US and the UK. Most hedge funds are based in Offshore Financial Centres (OFCs). While this is commonplace, by introducing the OFC-Intensity Ratio we show that the most intensive OFCs are under the sovereignty of the US and the UK.

The Cayman Islands is a key node in contemporary global finance, yet it is severely under-researched. This paper compiles the first 'anatomy' of the Cayman offshore financial center (OFC), utilizing all sources of publicly available data about the three main segments: banking, direct investment, and portfolio investment. The analysis is performed both diachronically to see when large inflows occurred and geographically to determine what role certain countries play in different segments. This dissection of the Cayman OFC shows that the United States is the largest counterparty in all segments with Japan playing an important role too. In fact, when excluding long-term Treasuries, Cayman is the largest holder of US securities in the world. Hedge funds are the main factor for this strong Cayman-US link. About 60 percent of global hedge fund assets are legally domiciled in Cayman – an extraordinary spatial concentration in such a tiny jurisdiction. A novel contribution to the analysis of the Cayman OFC is the introduction of the Anglo-America/Anglosphere approach. This approach provides one plausible explanation for the unparalleled rise of the Cayman OFC by seeing this jurisdiction as one node in an Anglo-American triangle together with the US and the UK, Cayman's sovereign power.

""From 1998 Offshore Finance Centres (OFCs) faced complex, overlapping initiatives from the OECD, IMF, FATF and EU. This paper contends that OFCs faced unprecedented Rapid Complex Constant Change (RC3) which had significant impacts on their host governments. The ‘four spaces’ concept – regulatory, fiscal, secrecy and political space – is used to analyse RC3. Two aspects are examined: first, the impact of RC3 on host governments; and, second, the degree of the hosts’ control over the industry. A Jersey case study illustrates the contrast between official narratives of proactive government and alternative narratives of the OFC being driven by the international banks. Finally, lessons are suggested for host governments. Key words: tax havens; financial services; globalisation; international finance; island economies; governance""

A crucial element in the complex chain of factors that caused the recent financial crisis was the lack of regulation and oversight in the shadow banking sector, which is largely incorporated in offshore financial centers (OFCs), but instead of swift and radical regulatory reform in that sector after the crisis, we observe only incremental and ineffective measures.Why? This paper develops an explanation based on a two-level game. On the international level, governments are engaged in competition for financial activity. On the domestic level, governments are prone to capture by financial interest groups, but also susceptible to demands for stricter regulation by the electorate. Governments try to square the circle between the conflicting demands by adopting incremental and symbolic, but largely ineffective, reforms. The explanation is put to empirical scrutiny by tracing the regulatory initiatives on shadow banks and OFCs at the international level and within the United States and the European Union, where I focus on France, Germany, and the United Kingdom.