The only Offshore Centres to rank ahead of the Isle of Man were Jersey (18) and Guernsey (22), despite a decline in their rankings of four and seven places respectively since the previous report. 

The Isle of Man saw no such decline of any kind in its rank, successfully closing the gap between itself and Jersey and Guernsey.  All other Offshore Centres, which includes areas such as the Cayman Islands and Gibraltar, also experienced some degree of decline.

This is positive news for the Isle of Man which continues to be an important financial centre for international business and offshore finance.  The Island provides political stability, business friendly regulation, favourable taxation regimes, discretion and appeal.

The aim of the GFCI is to examine the major financial centres globally in terms of competitiveness.  It was first published by the Z/Yen Group in March 2007 and has since been published every six months.

The GFCI povides profiles, ratings and rankings for 75 financial centres using two separate sources - instrumental factors and financial centre assessments.

Instrumental factors are drawn from a range of external measures and are grouped into five areas of competitiveness- People, Business Environment, Infrastructure, Market Access and General Competitiveness.

Financial centre assessments are provided by responses to an ongoing online questionnaire which asks questions relating to respondents perception of competitiveness and how they rate centres with which they are familiar.

The overall results have been optimistic and indicate that there is a greater degree of stability in the perceived competitiveness of the financial centres, which are responding robustly to the economic recovery.