Here’s The OTHER Issue Hidden By The “Fast-Track” For TTIP
The EU Parliament Wants To Bury Lux-Leaks-Those Are OUR Taxes Being Sheltered & Hidden As Well-Imagine How Much MORE Enabled THAT Process Will Be If TTIP Becomes Reality?
R Andrew Ohge | Feb 7, 2015 | With Excerpts From Euractive Reports
Parliament shuns committee of inquiry into Luxleaks
The all-powerful Conference of Presidents of the European Parliament decided on Thursday (5 February) that there would be no committee of inquiry into the Luxleaks scandal, giving it less clout in ongoing investigations of tax avoidance at the European level. EurActiv France reports.
Calls to set up a special inquiry committee followed revelations in November that hundreds of multinational companies had secured secret deals from Luxembourg to slash their tax bills.
The scandal, quickly dubbed ‘Luxleaks’, embarrassed European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, who was Prime Minister of Luxembourg from 1995-2003, during which these tax arrangements took place.
In the European Parliament, a request to open a special committee of inquiry into the Luxleaks scandal had been signed by 188 MEPs.
But the three main Parliament groups – which all supported Jean-Claude Juncker’s appointment as Commission President – instead decided yesterday to launch a special committee on tax evasion, with no investigative powers.
Two days previously, the legal service of the European Parliament had recommended that the political group presidents refuse the creation of an inquiry committee on the grounds that the proposal was ill-conceived.
The experts judged that the proposal failed to specify the object of investigation and lacked clarity in identifying the offences to be examined.
The Greens saw this as nothing more than legal quibbling, and believed another expert could have said just the opposite.
“The legal service could have used this argument to refuse to open any committee of inquiry,” said the Belgian Green MEP Philippe Lamberts.
The legal argument allowed Martin Schulz, the President of the European Parliament, to avoid the issue in the Parliament’s plenary session, which will vote next week on the creation of the special committee on tax avoidance.
When supporters disappear
The request to create a committee of inquiry was launched by the Greens and supported by the radical left, and a certain number of MEPs from across the political spectrum.
A total of 194 MEPs had originally signed the petition to open the enquiry, but some later withdrew their signatures.
On 5 February, the final count was 188.
A source within the European Parliament said “members of the EPP group [European People’s Party] came under great pressure from their party to withdraw their signatures, and most of them did so”.
The centre-right EPP group is the largest in Parliament and nominated Juncker as its candidate for the European Commission Presidency during the European elections campaign last year.
After winning the elections, the EPP formed a ‘grand coalition’ with the Socialists & Democrats, in a job carve up that saw Juncker and Schulz respectively take the Commission and Parliament Presidencies.
Speaking after the decision, Martin Schulz, said, “The Conference of Presidents has decided by majority vote that a special committee would have more powers and would be better suited to deal with this subject.”
Reduced powers but a broader field of investigation
The proposed special committee would investigate the tax practices of countries like Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Ireland, both today and in the past.
But a special committee has less power than a committee of inquiry, although it can investigate a broader range of subjects.
A committee of inquiry would have access to all national documents, while a special committee can only examine European documents.
The President of the European Parliament said he was “very optimistic that a special committee can bring real improvements”.
The Greens see red
This decision left the Greens and the radical left disappointed and frustrated.
Belgian Green MEP Philippe Lamberts said “we fought, and it was a long fight, because the committee of inquiry is the strongest tool against the administrative problems of the EU”.
“The three large groups did not want to give the minority what they wanted.”
“I am very disappointed with this result. I am furious that the rights of the minorities in the European Parliament should be scorned to this extent. It is an attack on European democracy!” said the German Green MEP Sven Giegold.
Meanwhile:
Belgian tax avoidance scheme – Quote from Philippe Lamberts on the EU Commission investigation into the Belgian ‘excess profit’ scheme
THE GREENS/EUROPEAN FREE ALLIANCE
Section:
EU Priorities 2020
Euro & Finance
“We welcome the EU Commission’s decision to investigate Belgium’s ‘excess profit’ regime, which is yet another piece of the nefarious puzzle that has enabled corporations to avoid their tax responsibilities in the EU.
As the Luxembourg leaks revelations confirmed, multinational corporations have gone to great lengths to avoid paying taxes and they have been abetted in doing so by EU governments.
Belgium’s finance minister must now fully comply with this inquiry.
Beyond the important question of whether this amounted to illegal state aid, it again points to the more fundamental problems posed by tax competition or dumping.
This is a wider political issue and it must be fully investigated, with a view to providing a comprehensive European response to end this mass scale tax avoidance.
We believe a European Parliament inquiry committee is the most appropriate instrument for doing so and we count on the other political groups to support this.”
Richard More O’Ferrall,
Press and media advisor, social media coordinator,
Greens/EFA group in the European Parliament
Mobile: +32-477-443842
Ph. +32-22841669 (Brussels); +33-388174042 (Strasbourg)
WHAT BELGIAN SCHEME You May Ask…This One:
Belgium on EU radar over corporate tax scheme
Belgium has slipped on to the European Commission’s anti-trust radar for a scheme allowing multinationals to escape paying due tax on as much as 90 percent of their profits.
EU competition commissioner Margrethe Vestager Tuesday (3 February) noted that the scheme only benefits multinationals and not “stand alone” companies or Belgian-only companies.
“If our concerns are confirmed, this generalised scheme would be a serious distortion of competition,”she said, adding: “as part of our efforts to ensure that all companies pay their fair share of tax, we have to investigate this further.”
Vestager’s announcement comes on the back of current EU investigations in to sweetheart tax deals given to Apple in Ireland, Starbucks in the Netherlands, as well as Fiat finance and Amazon in Luxembourg.
Those investigations were opened by the last commission before it left office at the end of October.
But they took on greater resonance when a media investigation in November revealed that Luxembourg – under Jean-Claude Juncker, now the commission president – handed out favourable tax deals to hundreds of major companies.
Vestager’s department is looking into whether these deals, which have resulted in many treasuries elsewhere missing out on billions of euros of tax revenues, breach state aid rules.
While tax rulings are not per se illegal, public tolerance for such deals has taken a nosedive amid high unemployment and slashed public spending in Europe.
Vestager said she was anxious not to be seen as conducting a witch-hunt against certain companies, but investigating “a scheme”.
The Belgian scheme allows multinational to substantially reduce their corporation tax liability in the country using the argument that they have made “excess profits” due to being part of a multinational arrangement.
Companies are able to get deductions on 50 percent of the profits covered by the agreements, and in some cases, as much as 90 percent.
Vestager noted that the Belgian set-up did not come to light as a result of the LuxLeaks investigation but from reading the news.
“We saw the excess profit tax scheme mentioned in the news and we took the lead from there,” she said.
“And here we are with an open investigation.”
The so-called LuxLeaks revelations put Juncker in an uncomfortable spotlight, particularly after he campaigned for the commission post on a ticket of reconnecting citizens with the EU.
After weathering the immediate storm, Juncker promised to be proactive in looking at whether tax deals – offered by the vast majority of member states – are compliant with EU state aid rules.
The commission has since asked all member states to provide information on how they attract companies with tax breaks.
It has also promised a law on making sharing this information obligatory as well as pledged to kick-start stalled legislation on setting up a common corporate tax base.
Refresh Your Memory On “Lux-Leaks”
More than 300 companies, including PepsiCo Inc, AIG Inc and Deutsche Bank AG, secured secret deals from Luxembourg to slash their tax bills, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) reported on 5 November, quoting leaked documents.
Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, who was prime minister of Luxembourg from 1995-2013, has so far declined to comment.
The companies appear to have channeled hundreds of billions of dollars through Luxembourg and saved billions of dollars in taxes, the group of investigative journalists said, based on a review of nearly 28,000 pages of confidential documents.
Lux Leaks, tax evasion and tax fraud – a €1 trillion bill that needs to be plugged
December 17, 2014 TheresaBlog
Last month a story broke about an investigative report into the various tax systems used by multinational corporations registered in the grand Duchy of Luxembourg, known as “Lux Leaks”.
A report by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists looked at a leak of 548 private tax rulings negotiated by the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers.
These rulings, also known as “comfort letters” were negotiated by the firm on behalf of more than 340 multinational corporations and allowed corporations to reduce their tax bills by routing profits through Luxembourg, saving the multinational corporations billions of dollars in taxes.
Lux Leaks is part of a larger issue of tax avoidance, tax evasion and tax fraud which costs EU member states €1 trillion each year – this is not acceptable and we need to deal with these problems as quickly as possible.
Today MEPs received welcome news from Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker that he will present an action plan to fight tax evasion and tax fraud within six months.
President Juncker’s commitment will see the introduction of measures to combat tax evasion and tax fraud.
It will include rules at EU level aimed at moving to a system whereby the country where profits are generated is therefore the country where taxes are paid.
Labour and the S&D Group have a long history of fighting against both tax evasion and aggressive tax avoidance.
Last year, it was the S&D group who drafted a European Parliament report that called for:
• All multinational companies to be compelled to report what they earn, where they earn it and how much tax they pay, broken down country by country
• A common approach taken to tackling the use of tax havens once and for all
• A blacklist of those companies that are engaging in tax fraud
It is great to see the Commission bringing forward legislation in this field and I, along with my fellow Labour MEPS, will continue to push the Commission to set common EU criteria in order to fight against tax havens.
While multi-national companies have avoided paying their dues, citizens across the EU have continued to see public services cut and living standards squeezed.
We need legislation now and I look forward to the work that will be done – it’s time to close down loopholes which allow this evasion to exist.
Commission spokesperson dodges awkward questions on tax evasion, while Juncker dodges the press
Published: 06/11/2014 – 15:26 | Updated: 10/11/2014 – 10:27
To the frustration of Brussels correspondents, on Thursday (6 November), chief Commission spokesperson Margaritis Schinas declined to comment on the latest revelation of secret tax deals between more than 300 international companies and Luxembourg on behalf of the current Commission President and former Luxembourg prime minister, Jean-Claude Juncker.
In the absence of Juncker himself at the EU executive’s midday press briefing, Schinas played down the importance of the leaked documents by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) which reveal that companies might have channeled hundreds of billions of dollars through Luxembourg and saved billions of dollars in taxes via special tax evasion schemes.
“The rules of state aid schemes are well-known. This is part of member states’ efforts to stimulate their economies and they will continue to do so. The Commission’s role is to make sure that all these schemes are investigated and the rules of the Treaty applied,” Schinas said.
The spokesperson added that the Commission is already acting on the matter as the previous Commissioner for Competition, Joaquín Almunia, has presented a number of cases and that the new Commissioner, Margrethe Vestager, will follow up on the cases to make sure that the state aid legislation is properly enforced.
Schinas said that all relevant questions on the schemes should now be addressed to Luxembourgish authorities, though all the cases occurred while Juncker was prime minister of Luxembourg, between 1995 and 2013, and referred to the Commission President’s previous applies.
On Wednesday (6 November), Juncker said that the Commission was perfectly within its right to investigate, and that he would not interfere in the work of his Commissioner for Competition.
“I wouldn’t do it, because that would not be decent. I have my idea about the issue, but I will keep it to myself,” Juncker said.
Schinas noted that previous Commission presidents José Manuel Barroso from Portugal and Romano Prodi from Italy lead dozens of cases against their home countries during their respective terms.
After more than 300 companies secured secret deals from Luxembourg to slash their tax bills, Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, and former Luxembourg Prime Minister, was asked on Wednesday if there wasn’t a conflict of interest since he took over as chief of the EU executive. Juncker said…
Independent investigation?
Danish journalists present at the press conference pointed out that Juncker has put his Competition Commissioner in an awkward situation, in case the investigation leads to Juncker and to decisions that he made as prime minister or was involved in making.
Therefore, Danish MEPs have also called for an independent investigation outside of the Commission.
“Vestager will do her job and no one can tell her what to do and not to do,” Schinas responded.
Meanwhile, an Italian journalist said that it was “scandalous” that while many Italian companies may have been involved in the Luxembourgish tax evasion schemes, leading to a deepening of the financial crisis in Italy, the Southern European country could now witness the former prime minister of Luxembourg, whose country benefited from these schemes, imposing further austerity measures in Italy.
On Thursday afternoon, Juncker was supposed to take part in the inaugural conference “Days of Brussels” together with former Commission President Jacques Delors, but around midday, the organizers announced that Juncker had canceled.
Prime Minister Xavier Bettel, who succeeded Juncker a year ago, said his country had not broken any rules and it was not alone in allowing tax schemes for big companies.
Finance Minister Pierre Gramegna told reporters in Brussels that Luxembourg would work with other states to level the tax playing field: “The moment that there is a recognition in the international community that fiscal matters must be equitable and the information should be shared, then Luxembourg would have no problem going in the direction of more transparency.”
He defended Juncker, saying it was wrong to single out “one politician for a particular period of time”.
POSITIONS:
The Greens’ economic and financial policy spokesman Sven Giegold commented:
“These revelations are a major blow to the credibility of new commission president Junker and his capacity to act for public interest.
There has never been such concrete evidence of the extent multinational corporations go to avoid their tax responsibility but also the role of state actors in facilitating this.
The fact that EU commission president Juncker served as Luxembourg’s finance and prime minister throughout this period makes him directly complicit in this mass corporate tax avoidance.”
Manfred Weber, the chairman of the European People’s Party (EPP) group in the Parliament, stated:
“The EPP group fully trusts and fully supports the European Commission in the ongoing investigation on schemes in Luxembourg and other member states opened by Commissioner Almunia and which Competition Commissioner Vestager will now be taking over.”
”I assume that Juncker is fully informed about the laws and regulation in Luxembourg. Everything else would be unlikely,” Swedish MEP Cecilia Wickström from the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats of Europe (ALDE) told the Swedish news agency TT.
“Juncker has two alternatives. Either he resigns or an independent investigations clarifies the situation,” saidMarita Ulvskog, the head of the Swedish social democrats in the European Parliament. Another Swedish social democrat, Olle Ludvigsson MEP, said that ”the money could have been spent in a much better way.”
President of GUE/NGL and German MEP Gabi Zimmer said in a statement:
“While these latest revelations from the international consortium of investigative journalists (ICIJ) are certainly no surprise, they provide invaluable new evidence that the Luxembourg state is knowingly complicit in tax evasion on a massive scale.
Juncker has serious questions to answer.
How much longer can these types of cozy relationships between elected governments and corporations continue?
EU Finance Ministers meeting in Brussels tomorrow must address the details of these latest revelations and tackle corporate tax avoidance once and for all.”
Danish MEP Jeppe Kofod from the Socialists and Democrats told Danish news agency Ritzau:
“We need clear guarantees from Juncker that he was not involved in his country’s wrongdoing. If he can’t deliver on this, he is finished as Commission President,” Kofod said.
“No matter if this is illegal or not it does seem as if the actions have been systematic in preventing other EU member states from receiving enormous tax profits.
Profits that could have gone to hospitals, welfare, education and job creation, but instead ended up in a tax haven.
This is despicable.”
Danish MEP Morten Messerschmidt, representing the European Conservatives and Reformist (ECR) group, told the news agency:
“It’s difficult to imagine that Juncker as prime minister and finance minister was unaware of this practice.
We need to have an external inquiry of the European Central Bank.
There’s no doubt that Juncker can’t continue as Commission President if he has had the slightest knowledge of this case.”
Tove Maria Ryding, Tax Justice Coordinator at the European Network on Debt and Development (Eurodad), said:
“This is deeply concerning and shows that international corporate taxation is in a state of crisis.
At a point in time when there is a desperate need for public finance, this collapse in corporate taxation requires urgent action from governments to stem this financial hemorrhage.
EU finance ministers are meeting tomorrow.
We need them to put together an ambitious plan which ensures multinational corporations pay their fair share of tax.
The unambitious initiatives of the G20 and OECD are clearly not solving the problem.”
Could TTIP Be A Major Aid To Make A Bad Situation Worse While Hiding The Existing One?
The federal and state government loses more than $180 billion in revenue every year to corporations and wealthy people who shelter their money in offshore tax havens.
To put that in context, every U.S. taxpayer would have to slap an extra $1,259 on their tax bill this year in order to make up for that lost revenue.
That’s according to a new report released by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group –a Boston-based firm that advocates for tax reform.
The group says more than $150 billion in federal revenue and $34 billion in state revenue is lost every year to major corporations and wealthy people that stash their cash offshore in order to skirt hefty U.S. tax bills.
PIRG notes that corporations account for about $110 billion of the total lost revenue—with wealthy individuals making up the rest.
Related: Offshore Tax Loopholes Cost States $40 Billion
Under current law, corporations are not required to pay U.S. income tax on most of their profits made overseas unless they bring that money into the United States.
This loophole allows companies to set up subsidiaries in low-tax countries and store their profits there.
A report by Audit Analytics, found that the total of offshore earnings was up 93 percent between 2008 and 2013, Reuters reported.
General Electric manages to avoid paying taxes on nearly $110 billion it has parked offshore within 18 different subsidiaries.
Likewise, Microsoft doesn’t pay U.S. taxes on the $76.4 billion it stores in five tax haven subsidies around the world. PIRG notes that if the software behemoth brought that money home, it would owe about $24.4 billion in U.S. taxes.
“Tax haven abusers benefit from America’s markets, public infrastructure, educated workforce, security and rule of law -– all supported in one way or another by tax dollars –but they avoid paying for these benefits,” PIRG said in the report.
“Instead, ordinary taxpayers end up picking up the tab, either in the form of higher taxes, cuts to public spending priorities, or increases to the federal debt,” it said.
– See more at: http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2014/04/15/Offshore-Tax-Havens-Cost-You-1259-Year#sthash.uKyB9lRP.dpuf
‘Patriotic’ Big Banks Profit Helping U.S. Companies Dodge Taxes
The Huffington Post | By Mark Gongloff
Posted: 07/29/2014
After wrecking the U.S. economy and sucking hundreds of billions of dollars from American taxpayers for their own survival, what can our patriotic big banks do for an encore?
Why, help American companies flee the U.S. to avoid taxes, of course. For America!
Andrew Ross Sorkin had a must-read New York Times column on Tuesday about how some of our biggest bailout recipients also have the biggest share of the nearly $1 billion banks have made in the past few years helping U.S. companies do “inversions.”
That’s when an American company buys a company in an foreign country that has a lower tax rate and then moves its headquarters to that country to shave a few points from its tax bill, possibly costing the U.S. government $19 billion over the next decade.
For America.
And you’ll never guess which bank has made the most money on this patriotic activity!
OK, you’ll probably guess: It is Goldman Sachs.
Yes, the Vampire Squid has made more than $200 million advising companies on 10 different inversion deals since 2011, according to the NYT’s crunching of Thomson Reuters data.
The second-busiest inversion handmaiden is Morgan Stanley, with 8 deals at nearly $98 million.
JPMorgan Chase has made more than $184 million on 6 such deals, and JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon has taken the extra step of publicly defending the practice, Sorkin noted.
“We have a flawed corporate tax code that is driving U.S. companies overseas,” Dimon recently said on a conference call.
“Even if you stop and say, ‘Don’t invert,’ capital will move away.”
And then Dimon added this hilarious kicker: “I’m just as patriotic as anyone.”
Which is a little like the “some of my best friends are black” racism defense.
I dare say that Jamie Dimon might not be exactly as patriotic as anyone, like, say, a soldier holding it down at a forward operating base in Afghanistan or, I don’t know, maybe the CEO of a company that decides against doing an inversion for reasons of actual patriotism.
But Jamie Dimon is not the first person in a Sorkin column to declare their undying love of country while doing the opposite thing.
In a recent column titled “Reluctantly, Patriot Flees Homeland for Greener Tax Pastures,” Heather Bresch, the CEO of drug maker Mylan, called herself a patriot as she reluctantly packed her bags to reluctantly move her company forever to the Netherlands, in order to reluctantly cut her company’s tax bill from 25 percent to the “high teens.”
Dimon and other defenders of inversions claim they keep U.S. companies competitive and so are truly patriotic.
If only the U.S. would cut corporate tax rates, they say, then these companies would stop running away.
But most of these companies already pay far less than the statutory tax rate of 35 percent.
And one tax professor told Sorkin that the U.S. would have to cut its corporate tax rate to less than 10 percent to have any real effect.
Unlike Dimon and Bresch, many bankers involved in inversions apparently have normal human shame responses and thus declined to comment to Sorkin on the record about inversions.
One told Sorkin, anonymously:
“This is going to sound cynical, but as much as I may hate these deals and the ramifications for our country, if I don’t do the deal, my competitor across the street will be happy to do it.”
Pro tip: If you ever hear an investment banker start a sentence off with “This is going to sound cynical,”you’d better brace yourself for a blast of weapons-grade cynicism right in the face.
President Obama has called for Congress to stop inversions, so of course they will probably go on forever.
But if even Andrew Ross Sorkin, who usually struggles to find reasons to criticize Wall Street, is angry about them, then maybe the chances are a little better than we thought.
So…It’s Time To Meet The Business Coalition For Transatlantic Trade-The Corporate Power Behind Everything TTIP-Here’s How They Describe Themselves:
ECONOMIC BENEFITS OF A COMPREHENSIVE TRANSATLANTIC TRADE AND INVESTMENT AGREEMENT
The United States and European Union (EU) have by far the largest economic relationship in the world.
The EU economy is just bigger than that of the U.S., with both generating over $15.6 trillion in GDP; together, we generate half the world’s output.
And because our ties are based on investment (over $4 trillion both ways) rather than trade, we have a total commercial relationship worth over $5 trillion – over $1 trillion in trade, nearly $280 billion in bilateral investment flows, and over $4 trillion in sales by our foreign investments.
Indeed, right now, every state – and virtually every Congressional district – has some trade with the EU, whether a soy farmer in Iowa, an almond grower in California, or an auto-parts manufacturer selling to BMW’s factory in South Carolina.
Yet in today’s economic climate, we can and must do better.
THIS IS WHY THE BUSINESS COALITION FOR TRANSATLANTIC TRADE IS DEDICATED TO REALIZING AN AMBITIOUS COMPREHENSIVE TRADE AND INVESTMENT AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE UNITED STATES AND THE EUROPEAN UNION TO PROMOTE COMPETITIVENESS, GROWTH AND JOBS IN OUR TWO ECONOMIES.
FACTS[They Say]
The agreement between the US and Europe should be concluded before the end of 2015, and should:
• Eliminate tariffs and other border obstacles to trade in goods
• Liberalize trade in services, including the data flows that underlie them
• Expand and protect investment
• Open government procurement markets
• Stimulate innovation and protect intellectual property
• Enhance capital markets
• Facilitate the movement of people, and Promote regulatory cooperation.
So…WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?
BUSINESS COALITION FOR TRANSATLANTIC TRADE
MISSION
The Business Coalition for Transatlantic Trade (BCTT) seeks to promote growth, jobs, and competitiveness on both sides of the Atlantic through an ambitious, comprehensive and high-standard trade and investment agreement between the United States and the European Union.
STRUCTURE
BCTT’s Steering Committee is co-chaired by major companies with significant equities in the transatlantic economy as well as many of the major multi-sectoral industry organizations. The coalition has several issue-specific working groups as well as a broad-based general membership. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce serves as the secretariat for the coalition.
Corporate Co-chairs:
• Amway,
• Citi,
• Dow,
• FedEx,
• Ford,
• GE,
• IBM,
• Intel,
• Johnson & Johnson,
• JP Morgan Chase,
• Lilly,
• MetLife
• UPS.
Partner Associations:
• Business Roundtable,
• Coalition of Service Industries,
• Emergency Committee for American Trade,
• National Association of Manufacturers,
• National Foreign Trade Council,
• Trans-Atlantic Business Council,
• U.S. Chamber of Commerce,
• U.S. Council for International Business.
• Working Groups: Subject to change as the negotiations unfold
o Goods
o Food & Agriculture / SPS
o Supply Chain / Trade Facilitation
o Services
o Mobility / Visa Issues
o Regulatory Cooperation (Horizontal / TBT / Sector-Specific)
o Digital Trade
o Competition Policy
o Procurement
o Investment
o Intellectual Property Rights
NEXT STEPS
The coalition has presented a series of position papers to U.S. and European negotiators.
We will focus on sustaining broad bipartisan support and on providing more detailed inputs throughout 2014.
Now Remember Jamie Dimon On Tax Havens & The Hundreds Of Companies NOT Being Investigated By The US Government Or Castigated By The Mainstream Press Over The Continuing Fallout Over Tax Havens.
Financial Industry Associations Urge TTIP Negotiators to Include Financial Services Regulatory Coordination in US-EU Trade Agreement
Targeted News Service
WASHINGTON, July 14 — The Institute of International Finance issued the following news release:
The Financial Services Forum (FSF), the Financial Services Roundtable (FSR), the Institute of International Finance (IIF) and the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) issued the following statement on the next round of negotiations of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) currently underway in Brussels:
“As the next round of trade negotiations moves forward, the financial services industry reiterates its position that it is imperative to include financial services regulatory coordination as a key component of TTIP.
With a global economy and intertwined financial markets, the financial sector cannot continue to work under misaligned, uncoordinated regulatory regimes.
A framework for coordination of financial services regulation between the US and EU would reduce conflict and complexity, and improve the efficiency of regulations across borders to the benefit of market participants, their customers and regulators.
We urge negotiators to capitalize on this TTIP meeting in Brussels to promote high-quality regulatory standards that promote consistency, coordination, and resilience in our transatlantic markets.”
The Financial Services Forum is a non-partisan financial and economic policy organization comprising the CEOs of 18 of the largest and most diversified financial services institutions doing business in the United States.
The purpose of the Forum is to pursue policies that encourage savings and investment, promote an open and competitive global marketplace, and ensure the opportunity of people everywhere to participate fully and productively in the 21st-century global economy.
Learn more at http://www.finanicalservicesforum.org
The Financial Services Roundtable represents 100 of the largest integrated financial services companies providing banking, insurance, and investment products and services to the American consumer.
Member companies participate through the Chief Executive Officer and other senior executives nominated by the CEO.
Roundtable member companies provide fuel for America’s economic engine, accounting directly for $92.7 trillion in managed assets, $1.2 trillion in revenue, and 2.3 million jobs. Learn more at FSRoundtable.org.
The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association (SIFMA) brings together the shared interests of hundreds of securities firms, banks and asset managers.
SIFMA’s mission is to support a strong financial industry, investor opportunity, capital formation, job creation and economic growth, while building trust and confidence in the financial markets. SIFMA, with offices in New York and Washington, D.C., is the U.S. regional member of the Global Financial Markets Association (GFMA).
For more information, visit http://www.sifma.org.
Meet Your Institute Of International Finance:
Board of Directors
Chairman
Douglas J. Flint *
Group Chairman
HSBC Holdings plc
Vice Chairman
Roberto E. Setúbal * +
President & CEO of Itaú Unibanco Banco S/A and
Vice Chairman of the Board of Itaú Unibanco Holding S/A
Vice Chairman
Walter Kielholz *
Chairman of the Board of Directors
Swiss Re Ltd.
Vice Chairman and Treasurer
Marcus Wallenberg *
Chairman of the Board
SEB
Board Members
Timothy Adams (ex officio) *
President and CEO
Institute of International Finance
Yahya Alyahya
Chief Executive Officer
Gulf International Bank
Walter Bayly +
Chief Executive Officer
Banco de Crédito del Perú
Martin Blessing
Chairman of the Board of Managing Directors
Commerzbank AG
Gary D. Cohn
President and Chief Operating Officer
The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.
Michael Corbat
Chief Executive Officer
Citigroup
Federico Ghizzoni
Chief Executive Officer
UniCredit Group
Francisco González *
Chairman and CEO
BBVA
James P. Gorman
President and CEO
Morgan Stanley
Piyush Gupta +
Chief Executive Officer and Director
DBS Group Holdings and & DBS Bank Ltd.
Gerald Hassell
Chairman and CEO
BNY Mellon
Nobuhide Hayashi
President and CEO
Mizuho Bank Ltd
Nobuyuki Hirano
President and CEO
Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Inc.
Anshu Jain
Co-Chief Executive Officer
Deutsche Bank AG
Antony Jenkins
Chief Executive Officer
Barclays plc
Jiang Jianqing
Chairman of the Board & Executive Director
Industrial and Commercial Bank of China
Steven A. Kandarian
Chairman, President and CEO
MetLife, Inc.
Chanda Kochar +
Managing Director and CEO
ICICI Bank Ltd.
Ben Kruger +
Group Chief Executive
Standard Bank Group Ltd
Masayuki Oku *
Chairman of the Board
Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group
Frédéric Oudéa
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Société Générale
Daniel Pinto
CEO, Corporate & Investment Bank
JPMorgan Securities plc
Brian Porter
President and CEO
Scotiabank
Baudouin Prot *
Chairman of the Board
BNP Paribas
Urs Rohner
Chairman of the Board of Directors
Credit Suisse AG
Suzan Sabanci Dincer +
Chairman and Executive Board Member
Akbank T.A.S CV
Peter Sands *
Group Chief Executive
Standard Chartered, PLC
Martin Senn
Group Chief Executive Officer
Zurich Insurance Group
Michael Smith
Chief Executive Officer
Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ltd.
Andreas Treichl
Chairman of the Management Board and Chief Executive
Erste Group Bank AG
Axel Weber
Chairman
UBS AG
Meet Your Financial Services Roundtable Directors:
FSR BOARD OF DIRECTORS
FSR is governed by a board of directors composed of 34 elected members.
The chairman, chairman-elect, vice chairman, and the immediate past-chairman are ex-officio members of the Board.
The Board of Directors of the Financial Services Roundtable establishes objectives annually, determines policies and strategies based on analyses and recommendations of Roundtable committees, and oversees implementation of policies and strategies on an issue-by-issue basis that involves FSR member representatives in an active role.
Chairman
Larry D. Zimpleman
Principal Financial Group
Chairman-Elect
Frederick H. Waddell
Northern Trust Corporation
Immediate-Past Chairman
John G. Stumpf
Wells Fargo & Company
BITS Chairman
Kelly S. King
BB&T Corporation
Treasurer
Thomas R. Watjen
Unum
Directors
Richard K. Davis (FSR Chairman Emeritus 2010)
U.S. Bancorp
James E. Rohr (FSR Chairman Emeritus 2011)
The PNC Financial Services Group, Inc.
Edward B. Rust, Jr. (FSR Chairman Emeritus 2002)
State Farm Insurance Companies
Thomas J. Wilson (FSR Chairman Emeritus 2012)
The Allstate Corporation
Term Expiring 2014
Theodore A. Mathas (Executive Committee Member)
New York Life Insurance Company
Ajaypal S. Banga
MasterCard Worldwide
Gary C. Bhojwani
Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America
Mark Casady
LPL Financial Corporation
James A. Israel
John Deere Credit Company
D. Bryan Jordan
First Horizon National Corporation
Manuel Sanchez
BBVA Compass
Stephen D. Steinour
Huntington Bancshares Incorporated
Term Expiring 2015
Beth E. Mooney (Executive Committee Member)
KeyCorp
John F. Barrett
Western & Southern Financial Group
Irene M. Dorner
HSBC Bank USA, N.A.
Grayson Hall
Regions Financial Corporation
Brian T. Moynihan
Bank of America Corporation
Mark W. Mullin
Transamerica
David W. Nelms
Discover Financial Services, Inc.
William H. Rogers, Jr.
SunTrust Banks, Inc.
Term Expiring 2016
Kent Adams (Executive Committee Member)
Caterpillar Financial Services Corporation
William S. Demchak
The PNC Financial Services Group, Inc.
Philip B. Flynn
Associated Banc-Corp
Joseph L. Hooley, III
State Street Corporation
Masashi Oka
MUFG Americas Holdings Corporation
Mark Pearson
AXA Financial, Inc.
Charles W. Scharf
Visa
Mark Standish
RBC Capital Markets
Kessel Stelling
Synovus
All These Folks Are the “Who’s Who” of American Finance and a Driving Force behind TTIP & TPP.
They have also benefited from Tax Havens, Bailouts and soon, “Bail-Ins”.
They are effectively robbing America Blind with Congress complicit in it all.
Where’s the news about Lux-Leaks Investigation?
Where’s the Congressional Committees Doing an Inquiry in to Tax Haven Tax Fraud?
Could there be OTHER ISSUES being promoted by the Government AND Main Stream Press to distract us from a potential quadrillions of dollars in lost taxes, assets, and property?
Anybody AWAKE YET?
Here’s The OTHER Issue Hidden By The “Fast-Track” For TTIP
The EU Parliament Wants To Bury Lux-Leaks-Those Are OUR Taxes Being Sheltered & Hidden As Well-Imagine How Much MORE Enabled THAT Process Will Be If TTIP Becomes Reality?
R Andrew Ohge | Feb 7, 2015 | With Excerpts From Euractive Reports
Parliament shuns committee of inquiry into Luxleaks
The all-powerful Conference of Presidents of the European Parliament decided on Thursday (5 February) that there would be no committee of inquiry into the Luxleaks scandal, giving it less clout in ongoing investigations of tax avoidance at the European level. EurActiv France reports.
Calls to set up a special inquiry committee followed revelations in November that hundreds of multinational companies had secured secret deals from Luxembourg to slash their tax bills.
The scandal, quickly dubbed ‘Luxleaks’, embarrassed European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, who was Prime Minister of Luxembourg from 1995-2003, during which…
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