(CNS Business): To counter any potential negative publicity about Cayman that could arise in the United States during the lead up to the US presidential election, Cayman Finance is launching an all-out push in the US media early next year. Using what he termed “surrogate partners” to get the pro-Cayman message across, Cayman Finance Chairman Richard Coles said that they would be using a targeted approach within the US media. Speaking at the Global Compliance Solutions conference currently being held at the Marriott Beach Resort, Coles said that such a push by Cayman Finance, the umbrella association that represents all the main financial associations on-island, was necessary because journalists in the US and even some politicians continued to misrepresent how Cayman fitted into the international economy.

“Cayman Finance continues to educate these journalists and politicians about how Cayman works in enabling international economic growth,” he said. “Once the election is completed and a new presidency in Congress, they should be able to legislate with a full understanding rather than with a few anecdotal press stories.”

To enable this and to rebuff what Coles called “baseless attacks” during the presidential campaign, Cayman Finance’s Washington counsel was in the process of building a team of knowledgeable surrogates to carry out Cayman’s message. This would be done through opinion pieces, interviews for print and television and blogs during the election season. 

“The US press does not really want to carry stories about the fact that Cayman co-operates, that we have a good compliance culture here and that we are transparent.  That is not what they want to hear,” he stated. “They still want to hear all the sexy stuff about what is going wrong down here. They want to print that but they don’t like to print the rebuttals. So we have found that the way to try and get that message through is to use surrogates.”

Coles confirmed that once the US Congress meets in January Cayman Finance will be in a position to deliver a pro international finance message from a variety of sources.

To illustrate the point, Coles said that after attending the conference he was heading straight to an interview with one of the top US financial newspapers and he would be telling the reporter about the international compliance conference that he had just attended and how seriously the jurisdiction took the issue of compliance.