Our regular snapshot from the Crystal team of some of the highlights and points of note for finance and corporate comms pros from around the jurisdictions this past month…

• Jersey: The suggestion was made by a current Jersey politician that the Channel Islands could move away from their badge of Crown Dependencies and move towards another term such as Crown Territories, to make the constitutional relationship clearer.
• Guernsey: King Charles approved changes to the way primary legislation is granted assent, with certain laws now being able to be ok’d by the Lieut Governor rather than going via Privy Council The new process should speed up certain legislative approvals.
• IoM: Amongst the proposals of the IoM 2024 Budget was that banking businesses (and large retailers) whose profits would otherwise be subject to a top-up tax outside the island under the income inclusion rule of the OECD’s so-called Pillar Two would be assessed income tax at 15%.
• Luxembourg: Luxembourg recorded one of the highest increases in bankruptcies in the EU in the final quarter of 2023 (Eurostat) – there was a jump of almost 16% in bankruptcy declarations compared to the third quarter, whilst Lux also registered the largest decrease in new business registrations in the final quarter of 2023, with a drop of over 10%.
• Luxembourg: Luxembourg for Finance announced a new CEO, Tom Theobald.
• Cayman: Cayman was officially removed from the EU’s list of high risk third countries in early February.
• The Cost of Local Media: In Cayman, the main local newspaper the Cayman Compass announced it was making all of its content free to access, including removing its online paywall. Meanwhile, the JEP in Jersey announced it would be increasing the cost of its weekday print edition by around 14%, to £1.25.
• Middle East: The Dubai IFC marked its 20th anniversary by announcing stellar growth, including a 26% yoy increase in active companies and its highest ever annual number of new company registrations.
• Social: Google rebranded its Bard AI function as Gemini, and will be a paid option integrated across its platforms.
• Social: After a year of being invite only, X alternative Blueksky, a decentralised social app, became open to the public, growing by 800k users in a day.