As Offshore Funds Grow, More Supervision Is Sought
Since 1978, the number of offshore funds has steadily increased from around 641 to 8,691 funds in 2000, according to Micropal.
Based on assets under management, some of the most popular offshore sites worldwide are:
- Luxembourg – $747 billion
- Cayman Islands – $250 billion (and domiciling some 2,500 funds)
- Dublin – $176 billion
- British Virgin Islands – $60 billion (domiciling 1,500 mutual funds)
- Netherlands Antilles – $55 billion
- Bermuda – $46 billion
- Jersey Islands – $39 billion
- Bahamas – $35 billion
- Guernsey – $24 billion
- Isle of Man – $4 billion
Among the largest multi-domiciled offshore funds (as of year-end 1999) are:
- State Street Bank – $147 billion in assets under administration
- Chase Manhattan – $140 billion in assets under administration
- BIL – $102 billion in assets under administration
- UBS – $101 billion in assets under administration
While offshore activity has continued to grow, organizations such as The Financial Stability Forum, (part of the Bank for International Settlements), published a study last spring calling for increased supervision of offshore centers since they considered them to raise “serious concerns on onshore supervisors about the quality of supervision in, and degree of co-operation provided by some of the offshore centers.”
As a result, the Forum chided the offshore countries to increase their supervision and degree of co-operation with onshore regulators “as quickly as possible.”