According to Prime Minister David Cameron former British dependences and Crown territories that were previously accused of being tax havens should no longer be described as such.

The UK government is putting pressure on its overseas territories. The British Prime Minister has requested to disclose information about the beneficial owners of each company registered in tax haven jurisdictions. In particular, the request was sent to Bermuda, The British Virgin Islands, Jersey, Guernsey, The Isle of Man, Turks and Caicos, Gibraltar and Anguilla.

A plan for cracking down on tax-avoiding strategies used by companies such as Google Inc. (GOOG), Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO) and Apple Inc. (AAPL) was proposed by The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The OECD was charged by the G-20 to tackle the issue.

According to The World Economic Forum’s (WEF) latest competitiveness survey Singapore retained its second position as the world’s second most competitive economy, behind Switzerland, which has kept its title for the fourth running year.

The long period of uncertainty has finally finished as the final agreement on the recapitalization of Bank of Cyprus has been drafted. According to the draft all depositors’ funds exceeding 100,000 Euros would have 37.5% of their funds converted into equity for the bank’s capital requirements i.e. shares.