quietly investing from and in the Cayman Islands with a focus on longterm value creation, the country itself has continued to evolve and develop. The Cayman Islands often leads the way among international financial jurisdictions, meeting or exceeding global regulatory standards and domestically, improving its capabilities in technology and telecoms, offering fibre-based reliability and speed, essential to global competitiveness and business continuity. Grand Cayman today is a one-stop shop for professional services in accounting, law, trusts and auditing, with worldclass leaders in their respective fields offering unparalleled service delivery in a competitive business environment.
use. The Cayman Islands specifically permits those creating trusts to reserve a range of powers over the trusts and, through the use of the innovative and unique “STAR Trust”, it allows the creation of purpose trusts which can be used to facilitate philanthropic giving, succession planning, or the furtherance of commercial goals.
Cayman continues to innovate and is expected to soon pass its Foundation Companies Law, an exciting legal development which will introduce another unique form of legal entity to the Cayman Islands. This commitment to legal innovation, supported by a network of highly qualified professionals allows the Cayman Islands to continue to meet the needs of an increasingly The continued rise of growing global sophisticated client-base. wealth means more family offices, and more of them exploring the optimal As the global BEPS (Base Erosion jurisdiction in which to base operations. and Profit Shifting) project marches More than ever before, the Cayman on apace, it is becoming increasingly Islands is prepared to serve single- important for legal entities to show family offices and the professionals that they have substance behind their responsible for wealth preservation, corporate exterior; that real decisions are management and growth. made in the place where the company is established. Cayman is ideally placed In the early 1990s when Ken Dart set to ensure that family offices established up his family office, the jurisdiction here will be able to evidence that their offered political stability, good transport “mind and management” really is in links to the US, and a sufficiently robust the Cayman Islands. Not only can communications infrastructure to allow family offices look to relocate their key a family office to operate. Over the next individuals to the Cayman Islands, the 25 years, Cayman has continually been family's structures can then be serviced refined to the point where today, it by local professionals. offers the depth and diversity needed to establish and service sophisticated wealth Cayman has a professional services and succession planning structures. culture underpinned by an open competitive market for services Building on solid English legal boasting multiple firms of highly skilled principles for trusts, the Cayman Islands professionals. During the past two has introduced trust-specific legislation decades, the jurisdiction has become which provides a number of creative highly regarded and is used directly and flexible tools for family offices to and indirectly by a large proportion
of the world's ultra-high-net-worth individuals and families and offering a degree of excellence, which underpins its established positive reputation amongst the jurisdiction’s clients. What Mr Dart thought was already a great international financial centre and destination to relocate to in 1994 has been significantly enhanced and modernised during the past 25 years. There is only one place in the Western Hemisphere where you can manage sophisticated trust structures, in a tax-neutral environment with access to excellent professional services, in a location with a stable government, proximity to the US and an incredible quality of life: right here on the tiny Caribbean island of Grand Cayman.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Mark VanDevelde Mark is the CEO of Dart Enterprises Ltd. and director of its Cayman subsidiaries including Active Capital, Dart Development and Dart Real Estate. Based in the Cayman Islands, Dart has a global presence with investments in Europe, the US and Caribbean; in addition to oversight of Dart’s global investments he leads the Cayman-based Family Office. He spent the first 15 years of his career in securities and investments and in the last 10 years, has added real estate development and mergers and acquisitions to his areas of focus. VanDevelde works closely with Dart’s visionary owner and shareholder, Kenneth B. Dart, to realise Mr Dart’s vision of a strong and sustainable local economy supported by the Dart Group’s corporate and community development activities. VanDevelde moved to Cayman over 20 years ago and considers it his home. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Finance from Michigan State University and is a Chartered Financial Analyst.
CAYMAN ISLANDS: THE PREMIER GLOBAL FINANCIAL HUB
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