If you are in the right place at the right time, investing in real estate can be one of the most profitable and enjoyable forms of medium to long term investment there is. Depending on your circumstances, international real estate investment may prove preferable, for a number of reasons, despite the additional challenges it can sometimes pose. Diversifying your investment portfolio by buying property in several different countries, for example, can help to cushion you against downturns in any one particular market. Even if you cannot afford to do this, you may find that you will be able to snap up an incomparable bargain in an up-and-coming country which would never have been available in your country of residence. (Unless you happen to have the good fortune to be resident in a newly popular emerging market country, of course!)
BEING AN EXPAT IN 2008
To believe the surveys, half the world is either already an expat, or planning to become one. Tens of millions of people work abroad, or have retired there, or have property in a foreign country.
If the words 'offshore banking' conjure up for you a shadowy figure wearing a Panama hat and crumpled white suit, smoking a cigar, and probably sipping cocktails from a hollowed out coconut, then you've clearly been reading too much John Grisham. Stop it. It isn't good for you. In an increasingly globalised world, in which more and more of the population are becoming internationally mobile, and need financial services which reflect their circumstances, offshore and international banking has moved on. The growing need for international banking on both a personal and corporate level has led to an increase in the number and quality of financial centres, both offshore and on, and the diversity of financial services offered.
The latest Lipper Tass Asset Flows report says that net hedge fund industry inflows during the second quarter of this year increased to USD41.1bn, the second highest quarterly inflow since the second quarter of 1994 (USD43.3bn) and almost double the USD20.8bn in inflows during the first quarter. Net hedge fund assets reached an estimated USD1.67 trillion at the end of June.
BEING AN EXPAT IN 2007
Once upon a time, perhaps in the days of the British Raj, expatriates had a financially golden life style in recompense for the perceived horrors of a foreign posting involving endless travel, unpleasant insects and unpronounceable but deadly diseases. Once you had shaken the dust of London or Paris or Philadelphia from your feet, you could forget all about tax inspectors and set about hiring an extensive staff of punkah-wallahs and major-domos to run your immense colonial villa while you drank gin and tonic on the verandah (against malaria, of course).
Alternative Equity Investment
Once upon a time, before the Internet and before globalization of the financial sector, investment for most people meant buying stocks, shares or collective investment units through a broker, using the mail and the telephone.You can still do it that way, but more and more people, especially globe-trotting expatriates, do it on-line, and do it for themselves using a whole zoo of techniques in which direct ownership of underlying shares is just one solution, and no longer the best in many situations.
Labuan: The Suprise Package Of The Asia Pacific
When we think of the word ‘offshore,’ the names ‘Bermuda’, ‘Cayman Islands’, or perhaps ‘Switzerland’, are the ones that would probably come to mind before ‘Labuan’.
Singapore - Another Hong Kong
Located in South East Asia, Singapore is a highly developed and successful free market economy which enjoys an open and corruption-free environment, stable prices, a low tax regime and a per capita GDP equal to that of most parts of Western Europe.
