The first half of 2009 brought with it an extraordinary and unexpected burst of activity concerning international tax matters. Tax havens found themselves in the eye of a proverbial perfect storm. A new US president with a track record of seeking to “stop tax haven abuse”; an unprecedented banking crisis with some of its roots in offshore finance; a global recession and a Keynesian response to it that meant governments needed to eke out every last pound of tax revenue; high-profile examples of tax evasion uncovered in Liechtenstein and Switzerland – all seemed to coalesce around the sequence of G20 meetings and in particular the London Summit in April 2009. But the London Summit represented another important milestone. It was the.
