Offshore Finance

Offshore finance refers to financial transactions that take place in jurisdictions that are either literally or jurisdictionally separated from the major economies of the onshore world, such as the United States, Britain, Japan, or Germany. Offshore financial services are transacted from offshore financial centers (OFCs) found in dispersed locations throughout the planet. Although no firm consensus exists in the academic or business worlds as to the number of OFCs, most offshore jurisdictions are small independent or semi-independent island nations with spatial clusters found in the Caribbean basin and in Western Europe and in isolated locations in Asia and the Pacific region. This topic is of importance to geographers because the offshore world is often at the spatial margins of economic activity where many of the ...