The brainchild of Richard Brooks and Barnett Fletcher (Rock Brand) – the CTS Business Exchange is open for all those people who ‘sort of work’ in Gibraltar but are often found walking the streets and bars hopping from Wi-Fi to Wi-Fi  and newcomers to the Rock who are looking for somewhere to start their business.
CTS – providers of all things airborne, wireless and telephony are providing the space and all the technical support, telecoms and connectivity. The offices have been fitted out to provide flexible workspace solutions including ‘hot desks’, small office units and meeting rooms available for short term rental. The offering is supported by everything from coffee to video conferencing and a friendly receptionist on hand to assist.
The idea is clearly a good one as six out of the seven units are already let just through word of mouth and several hot desks are being booked in advance. Workspace can be booked by the hour, day week, month or longer along with meeting rooms and mailbox services.
Barnett Fletcher told B2B, “The CTS Business Exchange has been set up to service companies like Rock Brand were 20 months ago – new to Gibraltar, in need of some help and some friendly faces and somewhere to sit down, plug in and start work whilst keeping costs to a minimum.
We are probably the first offices you get to when walking from the airport or frontier and we are easy to find – it’s just what Gibraltar needs as it continues to attract new, entrepreneurial businesses.
Start-ups and new businesses to the Rock do not know how things will develop and they cannot justify committing to a long lease from day one.  The Business Exchange provides a more flexible option: professional modern offices at reasonable rates.”

When investing in the equity market, investors face three fundamental choices: What sectors do I like? What stock should I buy? Which countries are most attractive? Typically, many investors view those three decisions in that very order of preference, believing that portfolio performance will come from the selection of the best individual companies in their preferred sector.
However, when we look at the available empirical evidence and academic work, we find that the single most important choice is that of the individual country in which you invest, rather than the sector you prefer. In short, country selection explains the largest part of performance, select a good sector in the wrong country and your stock-picking skills go to waste!
Our first observation is that returns amongst the same sector of various countries are not as highly correlated as we could expect. Correlations between excess returns over their corresponding regional benchmarks of Industrials in EMU, US, UK & Japan over the past 15 years are generally quite low, with Industrials in Japan exhibiting a negative correlation with Industrials in the European Union, and the average correlation of Industrials across those regions being just 0.13. In other words, over the past 15 years, knowing that we liked Industrials (or not) was insufficient information to produce consistent out-performance if we did not know in which country to apply this preference. Although not necessarily as low, looking at the other nine major sectors also produces surprisingly low correlations between regions.

For each regional sector, we looked at the extent to which performance can be explained by excess returns from other sectors in the same region versus the explanatory power of the same sector in other regions. In the overwhelming majority of instances, we find that other sectors from the same region are better able to predict returns for a specific regional sector than the same sector in other regions.  It is clear that other sectors within the EMU contain much more information on how EMU Financials behave than Financials in the rest of the World. In other words, the country selection effect is stronger than the sector selection effect in isolation.
Finally, across the 4 main regions, those sectors where the region/country decision dominates the sector decision (and vice-versa) in almost all cases (in every case for Japan) the country/region decision dominates. The moral of the tale is, firstly choose which countries you like and then choose the individual sectors/stocks that you prefer.

Nigel Feetham has been appointed a Visiting Professor at Nottingham Law School, Nottingham Trent University, with effect from 1 March 2011 for a period of three years.
Visiting Professor is a title conferred upon persons of distinction who satisfy the criteria for appointment as a Professor. A professorship therefore recognises the merit of persons who are distinguished in their field, normally at national or international level, evidenced by sustained high professional standing in their discipline.
James Levy QC, Senior Partner at Hassans told B2B “We believe this is the first such appointment of a Gibraltarian legal practitioner to the eminent position of Visiting Professor and underpins Hassans’ commitment to the pursuit of excellence. The appointment will also help to raise the profile of Gibraltar as a mainstream European financial centre.”
He graduated with a First Class Honours degree from Manchester Metropolitan University and was awarded a Masters
degree in law with Distinction at Manchester Victoria University.
A barrister-at-law, he was admitted to the Supreme Court of Gibraltar on the 17th December 1993.
Nigel told B2B “I am delighted with the appointment and look forward to my association with Nottingham Trent University. As the position is that of Visiting Professor, I will still continue to practice law in Gibraltar as I currently do. I am grateful to my colleagues at Hassans and clients for their over-whelming support. I owe my biggest debt of gratitude to my wife Yvonne, my children Shannon and Matthew and my late grandfather Walter Feetham.”

Ibex celebrated its tenth year of trading in January this year and acknowledged the great service and loyalty of two members of staff who have been with the Company from day one.  Liana Pincho and Caroline Gomez told B2B how they have witnessed all the changes along the way, from the early days in a small office in the Cornwall’s Centre and then to Marina Bay, initially in Neptune House and then to The Tower.

Both Caroline and Liana have experience across the Ibex business but more recently Caroline has specialised in the underwriting of home insurance and Liana moved from Claims to be a figure well recognised by clients in the Horse Barrack Lane retail office.
In April, Caroline and Liana will move  with more than forty colleagues to the new purpose built Head Office at 66-68 Irish Town and the story will continue.
Following a party in January, Caroline and Liana were presented with gifts from the Company to mark the occasion and did not forget that it was also the tenth anniversary of Ibex Chairman and founder John Harrison who was also presented with a gift by his fellow directors.

‘King’s Bowl has started the new year with a new Management team and resolutions that will not be broken’ recently recruited General Manager, Polly Rae Smith told B2B.

Ann-Marie Fiol has also taken up the position of Assistant Manager. Both have come from different UK hospitality backgrounds. Polly Rae has worked in various hospitality institutions in managing roles. Before leaving the UK she was managing a Latin American restaurant chain in the heart of Bristol, where she revolutionised customer service standards and training procedures for the entire company. Ann-Marie has risen through the ranks of a popular London children’s soft play centre, and most notably as F&B Manager she took the stars on the door from 0-4 within less than a year.
‘As a reaction to the ever increasing interest in corporate party bookings, part of the ongoing event development has been the introduction of the immensely popular cosmic bowling.’ added Polly. With state of the art Bose sound system, lasers, UV lights, high quality projectors and a modern Juke-box, it’s no surprise that this has proved to be a big attraction. Not only reserved for parties, Cosmic Bowling is also on Fridays and Saturday nights for the general public to enjoy. Theme days and nights are constantly being created, and all the big sports events are always being shown.
Polly told B2B that ‘King’s Bowl is stamping its mark on the Gibraltarian map as the venue for Corporate Team Building events and personalised parties.’.

Paul Wharton is the Head of Corporate Banking at Barclays Wealth in Gibraltar. Paul has over 3 decades of experience in various roles within Barclays, predominantly in and around the London area and is passionate about supporting the Small and Medium Enterprises (SME’s) market as he sees this as the life blood of Gibraltar’s economy. Over the years Paul has won awards for his work in the SME markets and has served on the London Board of the Princess Trust.
Paul’s message today for all SMEs in Gibraltar is to protect themselves. “In these times of uncertainty, when markets are volatile it’s important that SMEs take every precaution to fix margins – otherwise they leave themselves exposed. We are all aware of the economic factors we can’t protect against, such as labour, inflation and government policy. However, we can protect businesses against the movements of currency exchange rates, interest rates and commodity prices; these solutions are available in Gibraltar.”
Let’s have a look at one of these potential risks in more detail; “Any business that has a regular requirement to make international payments needs to be aware of currency fluctuations. Whether you’re an importer, an exporter or both; if the foreign exchange markets move against you, the profitability of a deal can be negatively impacted and that’s money that comes straight off the bottom line. There’s no use in pulling out all the stops to seal a deal, only to see your profit margin quickly wiped out by a disadvantageous currency swing.
Paul points out that one of the most popular ways of covering short term foreign exchange risk is to take out a ‘forward contract’. The ‘forward contract’ ensures that a rate is agreed at the time the contract is agreed for a delivery date in the future, effectively protecting against adverse fluctuations that could impinge on the profitability of an otherwise successful future transaction.
Paul, together with his team in Gibraltar is active in having these discussions with his clients in Gibraltar right now. As Paul says,“I have a team of experienced Relationship Managers that cover the entire Gibraltar market from the very important sole trader right up to some of Gibraltar’s largest international trading companies. The key is for my Relationship Managers to fully understand their clients’ business and the industry they operate within. Barclays Wealth in Gibraltar has recently introduced the concept of their Relationship Managers becoming industry specialists. This will involve some intense training both in Gibraltar and the UK.
At present we have Relationship Managers specialising in the areas of Retail and Wholesale, Property, Shipping, Tourism and leisure just to name a few. Finally he added, “I want my managers to specialise within their chosen industries and really add value to the relationship that they have with their clients.”