The Second Fintel Financial Centres conference took place in Dublin Castle Ireland. We would like to thank all speakers, delegates, sponsors and participants for having attended.

The conference took place as business models and the entire framework of international financial centres faced radical change.

Jurisdictions equally faced change as their client businesses adapt to the changing business environment. While the business environment has changed – and changed fundamentally in some respects, particularly in the banking and credit spheres, so also has the regulatory and fiscal environment, both with regard to taxation, regulation, and prudential management.

For example, in the regulatory and tax sphere, jurisdictions that do not respond quickly enough to the changes that are coming down the track with what might be described as “smart” regulation (rather than just more regulation) will be left behind. Already, this trend has been discerned as a “flight to quality” in the GFCI Index No 5, by Z-Yen, whose author Michael Mainelli gave a keynote speech at the conference.

As the leaders of the major world economies signal an increased determination to crack down on “tax havens” the OECD executive charged with drawing up the “grey” and “black” lists of recalcitrant centres in the spheres of tax compliance and banking secrecy, Prof Jeffrey Owens,l spoke at the conference on the key tax administration issues.

The fine points of good regulation in the financial services taxation sphere will be critical for all financial centres in the new environment – and these were spelled out by speakers such as Professor Owens, and others such as David Green from the UK's Financial Reporting Council, and Barbara Ridpath of the ICFR.