Foreword - October 2019

It suggests that we do better as part of a community, rather than isolated as individuals.

The poem may well strike a chord with TEPs in the UK who are part of the EU. Although not members of the EU, the Crown Dependencies (CDs) of Guernsey, the Isle of Man and Jersey are, of course, under the influence of legislation initiated by the European Council.

Refreshingly, the three islands worked together last year in order to enact ‘economic substance’ legislation by 1 January 2019. The new substance rules and the impact on family offices in the CDs are examined by Alice Bricogne and Richard Laignel.

Our working life is littered with acronyms, one of the latest being DAC6, the result of another EU Directive.1

This legislation, which is designed to tackle aggressive tax planning, will be introduced by the CDs by the end of this year, and is explored by Ciara Smith.

Following on from the EU’s Fourth Anti-Money Laundering Directive, which required each Member State to establish a register of (express) trusts, the Fifth Anti-Money Laundering Directive (5AMLD) has expanded the categories of trusts that are required to be registered and provides for public access to those registers.

The effect on trusts in the CDs of this latest directive remains uncertain, and there are currently no firm proposals to introduce trust registers.

However, as far as public registers of beneficial ownership of companies are concerned, this is a different matter. With the enactment of 5AMLD comes the requirement for publicly accessible and interconnected central registers.

The CDs have maintained registers of beneficial ownership for many years, although these have not been accessible to the public. This all changed in June 2019, when the CDs announced, in a joint statement, that the islands have made a collective commitment towards publicly accessible and interconnected registers in line with the staged timescale set out by the EU.

The competition between Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man is fierce in the normal course of business, but in the face of political pressure and a common desire to meet global regulatory standards, they are working together to reach a common goal.

As good global citizens, the CDs have little choice but to comply. Should they not do so, then another quote from the same John Donne poem: ‘send not to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee’ sounds a warning of what could come to pass in terms of reputation and the future of the finance sector.

• 1Council Directive 2011/16/EU