(CNSBusiness): FirstCaribbean International Bank has offered its backing to a Speakers’ Bureau established by the Young Caymanian Leadership Foundation (YCLF) to provide young Caymanians with the opportunity to use their communications skills, engage the public in a variety of settings and influence the up-and-coming generation. Following the controversy last month regarding the YCLA’s choice of speaker for the recent awards ceremony, which was boycotted by some alumni, the bureau is aimed at nurturing some home-grown speaking talent. Twenty past YCLA finalists and winners will volunteer their time as guests or keynote speakers for events such as school assemblies, seminars, community and service meetings, fundraisers and corporate functions. 

(CNS Business): With just over one week to go before the local telecommunications firm goes live with its internet-based TV, LIME has opened a new 'Experience Centre' at its Galleria Plaza Store to showcase the new TV service. LIME will officially launch the TV on Grand Cayman on 19 April and customers can begin signing up this week for the three packages, which start with forty channels. The firm has signed a legal agreement with HBO enabling the company to bolt all of its channels legitimately to the LIME TV package, which the telecoms giant hopes will be a success. Despite being in the region for over 100 years, Cable & Wireless is starting from zero when it comes to TV.

(CNS Business): A bidder involved in the tender to generate 36MW of power for Grand Cayman has called for an open enquiry following the reports of possible wrongdoing at the Electricity Regulatory Authority (ERA). Navasota Energy, a Texas-based firm issued a release Tuesday afternoon stating that it was disturbed by the recent public disclosures alleging inappropriate behaviour by ERA officials and bidders in the recent solicitation process and pointed out that this throws the fairness of the tender process into question. On Friday, as a result of the allegations made by Joey Ebanks, the former MD of the authority, since he was suspended from his job in the wake of his arrest over financial irregularities, ERA officials announced plans for a probe into the bid.

(Forbes): If a new report about hedge fund corruption is to be believed, the industry is overrun with unethical and illegal activity. Some 46% of people at hedge funds believe their competitors break the law or act unethically and 30% say they’ve seen wrongdoing themselves.  Less than a week after F.B.I. agents handcuffed SAC Capital portfolio manager Michael Steinberg and escorted him from his Park Avenue apartment, the  report, released yesterday, says that more than a third of hedge fund professionals believe they have to break the rules to get ahead.

(CNS Business): With unemployment among local workers still high, the Shetty hospital in East End is poised to get Cayman working again, with the vast majority of the jobs going to local people. The workers on the site are overwhelmingly Caymanian and officials are committed to making that the case throughout the development period and afterwards when the 140-bed hospital is opened. An average of 85% of the work so far has been done by local people, and although there are over 60 workers on site at present, that figure is expected to top 300 as the project moves along.The first phase of the project began in February and since the start, more than three quarters of the workforce has been Caymanian.

(CNS Business): While the number of overnight visitors to Cayman keeps on breaking records, the cruise sector took an expected dip in February, when arrival numbers fell by more than 8%. The tourism industry was boosted, however, with another great month as visitors flying into Owen Roberts International Airport during the second month of the year were the highest for February for more than a decade, according to the latest statistics from the Department of Tourism. 31,966 overnight guests came to Cayman in the month, which was the best since 2001, when some 34,000 visitors came to the islands.

(CNS Business): Despite the many complaints about the lack of on-going major development in Cayman, which is hurting the local construction industry, those companies that are working are still managing to make a profit, according to a report about the industry. Construction firms in the Cayman Islands appear to be making the most money across the Caribbean, a report by regional property consultants BCQS international Ltd has found. Despite having some of the highest costs in the Caribbean, the analysis reveals that contractors and developers are still looking at an average 13% profit margin, one of the highest in the area, despite a turbulent year in the development business.

(CNS Business): Officials from Cayman Enterprise City (CEC) have announced a series of outreach campaigns to “aggressively attract companies” to the special economic zone, which is now more than a year old and has around fifty businesses registered. Targeting Toronto, Canada; Silicon Valley, California; and Austin, Texas, a CEC delegation will be in each of the locations throughout April and May drumming up business for the zone, which still does not have a physical campus. In a release, CEC’s CEO Charlie Kirkconnell said it had a target to attract one hundred companies by the end of 2013 with plans to break ground on the development sometime this year, more than twelve months after officials from the company first promised to begin the project.

(CNS Business): The local offshore sector will be able to attract new customers following changes made to the insurance law in the final session of the Legislative Assembly last month that facilitates the incorporation of cell companies. Rolston Anglin, the minister with responsibility for financial services, said the creation of a framework to register portfolio insurance companies within segregated portfolio company insurers (SPCs) in Cayman offered four main advantages over existing SPCs, which are already offered in the Cayman Islands.

(CNS Business): Changes to local legislation to facilitate the marketing of Cayman funds in Europe is another step in the jurisdiction's continued success in the hedge funds sector globally, according to Cayman’s financial sector association. Cayman Finance welcomed the legislative amendment which was made last month which will allow CIMA to enter into MOUs with its EU counterparts, using a model developed by the European Securities Markets Authority (ESMA). Gonzallo Jalles, CEO of Cayman Finance, said that the recent amendment was in line with the existing approach that Cayman took on cross border cooperation over the past decade.

(CNS Business): The chairman of the Insurance Managers Association of Cayman (IMAC) has welcomed the adoption of the Model 1 intergovernmental agreement (IGA) by the Cayman government in response to the US Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), as well as the similar arrangement that will be put in place to deal with the automatic exchange of information with the United Kingdom. Rob Leadbetter said the new regulatory initiative would help Cayman continue to compete on the global financial stage. Rolston Anglin, the minister who now has responsibility for financial services, announced the government’s decision to adopt the Model 1 IGA last month in the Legislative Assembly when he said it would ensure that Cayman kept up with a “rapidly developing environment of international tax cooperation,” he said.

(CNS Business): Local telecommunication firm LIME is tackling the problems with its voicemail system, officials from the company stated in a release last week. The voicemail is now available for both fixed line and post-paid mobile customers and technicians were continuing to work on the voicemail platform over Easter, with an expectation that pre-paid customers would also have access this week. Donnie Forbes, Head of Service Support and Delivery, said the majority of customers should now have access to LIME's voicemail platform but the firm has admitted that the technical problems means saved messages were lost. 

(Reuters): Moody's Investors Service on Wednesday warned it may downgrade Bermuda's Aa2 sovereign credit rating, citing prospects for further increases in already elevated government debt levels. "In addition, the island's economy remains in recession, making efforts to correct the fiscal deterioration more difficult," Moody's said in a statement. Moody's said its caution on Bermuda stems from a government debt to gross domestic product ratio rising to an estimated 28.1 percent by the end of this year from 5.9 percent in the 2007-08 period. However, it says a newly elected government's first budget "projects a large deficit that will raise this (debt to GDP) ratio further in the coming year to well over 30 percent."

(CNS Business): The Cayman Islands Chamber of Commerce is urging local business to sign up for this year’s Earth Day Roadside Clean-Up to do their bit for the environment. The clean-up, which marks the official kick-off of an entire month of Earth Week activities, will take place on Saturday, 13 April at 7:00am. This annual environmental awareness activity was first introduced in 1997 and now marks the official start of Earth Week. All volunteers will be provided with latex gloves and garbage bags and the first 800 volunteers will receive a free Earth Day. “The community spirit generated by this clean-up event is always extraordinary,” said Chamber Chief Executive Officer, Wil Pineau. 

(CNS Business): Government pushed through eleventh hour legislation on Monday that will allow Cabinet to designate certain positions, jobs, types of work or business areas as the sole purview of Caymanians. An amendment to the immigration law does not specify any role or business which should be reserved for local people, leaving the next administration to carve out the occupations dependent on its policy decisions. But despite its lack of specifics, the law came in for criticism from across the crowded opposition benches as mere “electioneering” and “unnecessary political window dressing” that will not solve the fundamental immigration problem of boards not enforcing the law.