The Bermuda Stock Exchange, law firm Appleby Spurling & Kempe, investment bankers Voyager Financial Services Ltd., and telecommunications provider TeleBermuda International Ltd. will hold half-day seminars on November 23 (Inter-Continental, Tel Aviv), November 27 (Hilton Hotel, Dublin) and November 29 (Knightsbridge Hilton, London).
"We want to reach the mind and management behind e-com, high-tech and bio-tech start-ups," said William Woods, Chief Executive Officer of the Bermuda Stock Exchange (BSX), the world's first fully electronic securities market.
"We want to attract those businesses with a solid business plan that want to expand globally."
In operation since 1971, the BSX last year began aggressively marketing a restricted Mezzanine Market for "qualified investor" capital, which enables start-up companies and specialist securities to list without the need for a full IPO.
The Mezzanine Market offers growing e-commerce, high-tech, and development stage companies the opportunity to list on a recognised international stock exchange at a much earlier stage than is currently possible in any other jurisdiction. The market is viewed as an ideal €˜incubator' for an eventual national IPO.
Voyager Financial Services, a member firm of the BSX, provides comprehensive listing sponsorship services to issuers seeking a primary or secondary listing on the BSX. "The Mezzanine Market is ideal for emerging companies wishing to either establish a secondary exchange listing for their securities or undertake private placement fund raising contemporaneous with a listing on the BSX," said Paul Lemmon, Managing Director of the Voyager Group of Companies. "This affords emerging companies initial access to the public capital markets that is more efficient and cost effective than if undertaken 'on shore'."
Appleby Spurling & Kempe (AS&K) is Bermuda's largest law firm, with some 67 lawyers and a total complement of more than 350 staff. This year, AS&K became the first Bermuda law firm with an Internet site for the online incorporation of offshore companies.
The site, www.justaskinc.bm, allows clients to begin the incorporation process from anywhere in the world, seven days a week, 24 hours a day. Clients may choose to pay their incorporation fees by credit card via a secure payment gateway.
"As a firm, we not only provide legal services to 'new technology' firms, we have embraced the technology ourselves," said AS&K partner Warren Cabral, practice leader of the firm's intellectual property and information technology department.
"Providing this new method of incorporating a Bermuda exempted company is a perfect example of the important role that technology will play in the development of business for Bermuda.
"AS&K has embraced this new technology, and in so doing we have provided our clients with a secure, efficient, convenient way of incorporating a Bermuda exempted company."
Established in 1996, TeleBermuda International Ltd. (TBI) is an international facilities based carrier, licensed by the Government of Bermuda to provide long-distance, voice and data telecommunications. The firm operates from its multi-million-dollar international e-commerce facility at St. David's, Bermuda.
TBI's high capacity fibre optic cable system links businesses to high-speed communication networks, ensuring superior digital transmission. Bandwidth speeds are available from 56/64 KBPS through 768 KBPS plus T-1 and E-1 to accommodate data transport, digitised voice and advanced video transmissions. The firm also offers international private leased circuits.
TBI's one billion dollar undersea cable project, 360americas, will carry voice, video and data traffic between the United States' eastern seaboard, Brazil and Venezuela via Bermuda. "We are working to make Bermuda the hub of international e-commerce and telecommunications services," said TBI's General Manager, James Fitzgerald.
Summing up the €˜Bermuda Advantage' Warren Cabral stated, "Bermuda offers the regulatory, legal and business environments necessary for such companies to thrive and prosper. The island has a full range of intellectual property legislation, providing protection for patent, trademark and copyright owners.
Bermuda is at the forefront of the Internet revolution, having introduced legislation last year - the Electronic Transactions Act 1999 - that gives legal substance to electronic data and transactions negotiated over the Internet. The island's government also features the world's first Ministry of E-Commerce. Bermuda does not levy taxes on income, profits or capital gains."
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) earlier this year endorsed Bermuda's reputation as a jurisdiction of the highest integrity when it excluded the island from its list of international tax havens.
To find out more about the half day seminars, those interested can visit the tour's website at www.b2bbermuda.com.