Summit Notebook

Tax evaders on the run

  By Neil Chatterjee     The U.S. has promised it will hunt down tax evaders.     And it seems tax evaders are on the run.     DBS bank, based in the growing offshore financial centre of Singapore, told Reuters it had been approached by U.S. citizens asking for its private banking services. But when told they would have to sign U.S. tax declaration forms, the potential clients disappeared.       Swiss banks also approached DBS on the hope they could offload troublesome U.S. clients to a location that so far has not been reached by the strong arms of Washington or Brussels.     DBS said no thanks. In fact many private banks and boutique advisors now seem to be avoiding U.S. clients.     Will this spread to other nationalities, as governments invest in tax spies and tax havens invest in white paint?     Is this the end of offshore private private banking?

Audio – And then there were two?

Priceline.com CEO Jeff Boyd told the Reuters Travel and Leisure Summit in New York that he thinks that at least two out of the four players in the online travel sector – Priceline, Orbitz, Travelocity and Expedia – could be in a position for either an IPO or a sale once the economy turns up.

“I think that the most important fact there is that two of the major players are owned by private equity,” he said. ”Orbitz is controlled by Blackstone. And Travelocity and Sabre Group are controlled by TPG and Silver Lake Partners. And what that means is eventually they will be looking for a way to monetize those private equity investments, and there’s two ways of doing it.

One is through a public offering and the other is a sale. So, eventually there’s going to be some transactions there, and that could be a catalyst to some consolidation.”