Starting school is a crucial step in every child’s life. It can be stressful for both the child and the parent but it is also an exciting time, a new chapter for parent and child alike.

Within minutes of driving from the arrivals car park any worries that being on a Caribbean island over Christmas wouldn’t be quite the same as back home are washed away.  The thousands of fairy lights and Christmas garden displays make the Selfridges window look half hearted.  

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Cayman is most certainly open for business and poised to prosper in the months ahead. This was the message that Cayman’s Premier, and Leader of Government Business, Hon Mckeeva Bush energetically delivered at the Cayman Business Outlook 2010 conference held yesterday at the Ritz Carlton here in Cayman.

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“Wandering through an imitation of an imitation of a place they wanted to go to”, wrote Lawrence Osborne in his book The Naked Tourist.

While work (and hence demand) for corporate finance and structured finance lawyers continues to remain relatively quiet in the aftermath of the global economic crisis, funds lawyers in Cayman are finding that for them work flow is slowly improving and hopefully the worst of the recession may now be behind them.

Last weekend saw a CML Gaelic 9’s Team compete in the Mixed 9s Tournament for the 3rd year running. The Mixed 9’s Tournament marks the start of the Cayman Islands Gaelic Football Club (CIGFC) season and gives those who have never played before, the chance to get involved in what is a great event. The tournament was bigger and better than ever and had the most closely contested games in recent years. Having brushed a-side a strong HSBC team in the opening game, CML's next opponents where the much fancied Digicel side. Boasting an array of Irish talent (Digicel) this was a hard-fought game with Digice...

At 4:53 pm on January 12 2010 an earthquake measuring 7.0 on the Richter scale shook the mountainous country of Haiti. Haiti is the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere and inadequately constructed buildings had no chance of standing up to the violent tremors than ran through them that afternoon. Its capital Port-au- Prince lies devastated, a mass of debris which people are sifting through to find their loved ones – in the vain hope that there is still life beneath the rubble. A sign that this is unlikely is seen in the ever increasing number of bodies being laid in ...

A colleague drew my attention to this TimesOnline article designed to scare the pants off would-be tax-raisers in the UK Treasury.  The article suggests the well-heeled are showing a clean pair to Alistair Darling as they live it up on sunny offshore islands (and/or Jersey, which I understand is currently under a few inches of snow).  But a careful reading suggests the picture may not be as bleak as the writer’s dubious statistics portend

The recent cold snap that the entire world seems to be experiencing has left the residents of Cayman, including myself, shivering and wondering has it ever been this cold here before?  I can remember when we were kids living here taking full advantage of any cool breeze or Nor’wester to wear our heavy sweaters and jackets to school! This past week I’ve been looking for closed toe shoes and long sleeved tops to wear to work as well as ensuring I have my wind jacket in the car, which is totally different from what we normally experience.

Cayman, and most of the Caribbean, can only really boast two seasons, Wet and Dry, so g...

Cayman has its fair share of wealthy visitors to its shores throughout the year. Some celebrities escaping the flash of the paparazzi glare, and some visitors so wealthy you wouldn’t recognize them if they were sat next to you on the beach . You know the types. Or maybe you don’t.

Just after Christmas we had a visit from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. Well at least we had a visit...

Tony Cheung has joined as the Vice President for the Asia Pacific region of CML in January 2010 to head up the accounting recruitment team at our Hong Kong office.

Having spent most of his life in Scotland, Tony completed his education and obtained a Bachelor of Accountancy (Hons) degree at his local University of Dundee in 1996.  He pursued his accountancy path and went on to complete his traineeshi...

Let’s face it, anyone who works in the offshore environment has a high content of capitalist blood cells running through their veins, it’s one of the main reasons we decided to swap our lives in our dreary home countries and move to paradise to earn tax free salaries. Or, if you are lucky enough, you get to be native to this incredible lifestyle!  

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Just before Christmas we had a regular staff meeting. Well I say regular but I suppose a meeting by the pool just outside the office, shaded by swaying palms trees, with chings chings and occasional iguanas as spectators  is far from normal. Anyway, I digress. The subject of the meeting was blogging and why we wanted to re-start it at CML. We were asked what the point of it would be and a resounding answer was to put human faces to our company.  I wondered...