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?

Even for an American who’s not wealthy, Geneva has a reputation as a global centre for wealth management - the place the world’s rich come to stash their money and (they hope) make it grow.

    But you don’t necessarily expect it to be so aggressive — after all, the rich tend to be demure when it comes to their banking.

    Imagine one reporter’s surprise, then, on arriving in the airport in Geneva and seeing bank ads everywhere. Think of the casino adds in Las Vegas’s McCarron Airport or the technology ads in San Jose’s Mineta Airport: it’s the exactly the same in Geneva, only with wealth managers.

    Look left - there’s UBS. Look right - there’s Julius Baer. Look up in the baggage queue - there’s a Swiss bank that emphasises a focus on the Arab world. A complete unscientific guesstimate suggests the display ads in the terminal run about 75 percent wealth management and 25 percent fine watches. (No surprise that every other storefront in the Ville Centre area of Geneva has watches on offer.)

    There is one plus to all of the bank ads in the airport for the less wealthy though. Tell your cab driver to head toward their addresses and you’re likely to find the city’s best cafes.

The Reuters Middle East Investment Summit in Dubai was hit by the whirlwind visit of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown across the Gulf as he looked to drum up support for ailing British firms and convince Gulf investors the IMF’s bailout fund was a safe place to put their cash. After courting Saudi Arabia and Abu Dhabi, it was a fleeting visit to the region’s commercial hub Dubai. As his motorcade flew passed the world’s tallest tower But hark…we have seen this before. President George Bush headed to the United Arab Emirates more than a year ago. But that’s where the similarities stop. For Mr Bush, Dubai ground to a halt. Chaos ensued. Streets were closed. Workers sent home. The President was in town, so that was that. Fast forward November 4, 2008. Mr Brown is here. Dubai is business as usual, although The Prime Minister’s motorcade did delay a speaker for the Reuters summit. Perhaps the credit crunch has meant random days off are no longer on the Dubai agenda……. unless you’re the President of course.

The credit crisis may be hitting the man on the street hard, but spending by the “other half” on the latest super yacht or Damien Hirst work of art looks set to carry on relatively unaffected.

Super-wealthy individuals in commodity-rich areas such as Russia and the Middle East are reaping the benefits of a five-year boom in oil and other commodity prices.

Even though oil and commodity prices are now coming off sharply, the boom is still feeding through into their spending power, provided they haven’t done anything too risky with their cash in the meantime.

And it’s happening just when everyone else is cutting back on non-essentials.

“It’s like philosophy,” explains ING’s Deputy CEO of Private Banking Bernard Coucke.

“Philosophy always comes after a century of economic prosperity, never before. Spending always comes after prosperity, never before.”