MH Bland is pleased to announce that new MH Bland Group of Companies website, www.mhbland.com is now up and “live.”
Mandy Gaggero, Marketing Manager for the Group, said that “Of particular interest to the community will be the archive section which offers visitors to the site a wide selection of photographs and other material spanning the 200 years of the company’s and therefore Gibraltar’s history.
We have worked on giving the site a fresh look after celebrating our 200th Anniversary and taken the time to include a complete copy of the commemorative booklet which was commissioned in 2010. I hope that all visitors will enjoy the new look and I would welcome any feedback.”
MH Bland also recently re built and re launched their MH Bland Travel Services website, www.mhbtravelservices.com which offers clients details on special offers on both holidays and cruises.
MH Bland Travel Services also has a Facebook page as do Dolphin World which posts all the latest marine activity in the Bay of Gibraltar.

Want a pension at 65 of £10,000 a year in today’s money? Start saving at age 25 and it will cost you £270 a month. Start saving at age 45 and it will cost you £630 a month, well over twice as much. We’ve all seen these sorts of figures before. The moral is start saving early and let compound interest do its work.
Actuaries reckon that in future it will be common for homo sapiens to live to age 100 (and maybe without, as Woody Allen said, having to give up all the things that make you want to live to be a hundred). Governments have now begun to put up state pension ages, but not by as much as increases in life expectancy, so peoples’ retirements are getting longer and longer. The need to save, save enough, and save effectively is more important than ever.
Companies don’t have to offer a pension scheme, but most do. The view that the employees are not interested in or don’t understand pensions is no more or less true than any generalisation. Certainly pensions do seem to be bringing people out onto the streets these days. A recent survey of public sector workers in the UK indicated that a significant number would rather have a pay cut than reductions in their pensions.
Employers therefore play a valuable role in providing a good pension scheme. Understandably most now prefer the defined contribution model where their pension costs are a fixed and known percentage of their salary bill.
However, for many people a defined contribution pension is an act of faith.
The employer and employee each typically pay something like 5% of salary into a scheme and basically hope for the best. Pension benefits from a defined contribution scheme don’t have to be a matter of luck. Just like final salary pension schemes defined contribution schemes need to be regularly reviewed and made to work, so that when an employee reaches retirement there are no surprises or disappointments about the level of pension benefits.
This still doesn’t do away with the need to start saving early, but it certainly helps in a world in which it seems many more of us will become centenarians.

Ibex Insurance Services Ltd celebrated the official inauguration of their new offices, 68 Irish Town.
On the 8th of June, Ibex Insurance hosted the official opening of their new offices, 68 Irish Town. The event, which took place between Sacarello’s and the new office, saw the ribbon being cut by the Chief Minister Peter Caruana, who officially announced that the office was open and congratulated John Harrison, Chairman of Ibex Group, on the success of Ibex and its growth over the last 10 years.
Mr Harrison then took the opportunity to thank the loyal Ibex staff who had been instrumental in the Company’s success and to show the Chief Minister around the offices which are located over four floors and house over 40 members of staff. More than another 40 staff are located in 14 Ibex Insurance branches in Spain and Portugal. The new offices have now centralised the underwriting, claims and administration functions of the Company with the retail office giving Ibex Insurance a ground floor presence in the centre of town in smart new surroundings.
The event was attended by many local business people, and a number who had travelled from Spain and the UK for the special occasion. The guests enjoyed the ‘street party’ atmosphere on a warm summer evening, with canapés by Vickie Bishop Catering and jazz music by UK musician Tom Rust.
For more information about Ibex Insurance and its range of Insurance products including the newly launched Business Insurance please call 200 44628. www.ibexinsure.com

Since the 10% corporation tax rate became effective, most attention has been on the quality and quantity of companies being attracted to Gibraltar to take advantage of our attractive fiscal regime. However, what stood out for us at Chesterton, in August, was acting for two entirely different companies taking office premises here in Gibraltar, both of which will add to local employment and the local economy, yet were not directly a result of the low tax regime.
Firstly, Hideaways Experienced Investor Fund. This overseas lifestyle property investment fund, now the largest fund in Gibraltar measured by the number of investors, moved to significantly larger premises within Gibraltar to enable it to increase the number of operational staff it employs locally. Further growth is forecast as the fund grows.
What this demonstrates is that the increasing funds sector will boost more than just balance sheets as many such funds have a requirement for an operational side to their businesses, some of which will be in Gibraltar. It is pleasing to identify the fact that the funds industry has a positive ripple effect beyond just the finance centre in Gibraltar.
Secondly, and perhaps what will impact our economy more, is the establishment of Computacenter in Gibraltar.
Computacenter is Europe’s leading independent provider of IT infrastructure services. It has over 10,000 employees across Europe and £2.7bn annual turnover.
It is a significant addition to the corporate sector locally.
According to Marc Fryer, Computacenter’s Client Director for the Corporate & eGaming Sector, and with whom we worked closely during the process of establishing them here, “Gibraltar continues to attract the best in class gaming companies across the world. We have invested in Gibraltar to offer the support these companies need and deserve. Computacenter is a respected and pan European IT Infrastructure Services and Solutions provider with a history of dealing with some of the largest public and private organisations globally.”
Its prime motive for establishing in Gibraltar is not, therefore, tax driven. It is quite simply the ripple effect of Gibraltar’s gaming sector that has convinced such a large corporation to establish here.
And it bodes well for high end employment too. “We will have personnel on the Rock that can assist in providing Supply Chain Services, Professional Services and Managed Services, focussed on IT Infrastructure” Fryer told B2B.
The ripple effect goes further, because when a large organisation like Computacenter establish in Gibraltar, other related parties from overseas watch and learn. “We are also educating tier 1 technology vendors on the importance of supporting Gibraltar and these vendors include EMC, Cisco, HP, VMWare, Oracle and Microsoft.”
All in all, it was a good August.

Mike Nicholls is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants and a member of the Gibraltar Society of Accountants.

Mike operates Chesterton estate agency (www.chesterton.gi) and owns MN Associates Limited, a local company specialising in Gibraltar property, funding and relocation.
See www.mn-associates.gi

The word Khaima is the Arabic word for tent but at the Rock Hotel it has become a byword for Gibraltar’s latest and most unique venue.
The pool area…
The hotel’s recently refurbished pool area has a distinctive Moorish look with definite shades of Marrakech! The addition of the Khaima, or marquee, sitting within this new environment gives the hotel a stunning venue that can be used winter or summer for a whole series of social and business purposes – at night in particular, the Khaima and surrounding pool area is magically lit with mood lighting and wonderful Moroccan lanterns and is adorned with red carpets hand made by Berber craftsmen just for your delegates and guests.
Spacious and versatile…
The Khaima is spacious and versatile and is air conditioned for the summer as well as having the option of heating in the winter. A number of local companies have already held successful events within its walls and the diary is looking very promising as we end the summer and start to think about the conference and festive seasons – both of which can be catered for particularly well.
Conference, dinner, Christmas, Halloween…
There is a range of Khaima menus from canapés to formal banqueting, from Moroccan inspired menus to two or three course menus for hungry conference delegates. Fresh off the press is a range of Christmas party menus with live music and DJ options that are guaranteed to get your company or organisation’s celebrations rocking and with Halloween on its way why not be the first to book a spooky company disco.
Independent hire…
The Khaima can also be hired as an independent venue if so desired and third party event companies are welcome to talk to the hotel about ways in which they can work together to use this amazing location. With a dedicated kitchen area to rent we welcome visiting chefs, event organisers, party planners and caterers to the Khaima.
Transport solutions…
For a venue that can sit up 200 people and can provide a cocktail or conference environment for many more, the hotel also has a logistical solution and in conjunction with its sister company BGI Travel, can offer the ideal transportation from your company headquarters or from a variety of bespoke pick up points in and around Gibraltar.
Or take the elevator home…
Subject to availability the Rock would be delighted to offer a very special overnight rate to any bona-fide attendees of a Khaima event of £70.00 per room including a full English buffet breakfast.
Find out more…
The Khaima has a dedicated manager, Alex Martin and he can be contacted at amartin@rockhotel.com
Likewise, the Khaima has its own dedicated enquiry centre and an e-mail to Khaima@rockhotel.com will get you an information pack that will tell you all you need to know to get you Khaima wise!
They say a picture paints a thousand words but even better is to get up close and personal so why not call us and we’ll give you a one to one show round of this exceptionally different and quirky venue

Investing in innovation and new technologies has been a key strategy for Gibtelecom, and this year we have seen one of the Company’s major transformational projects coming to fruition – the Europe India Gateway (EIG) submarine cable project, perhaps the most ambitious and potentially important commercial project with which Gibtelecom have ever been involved.

Gibraltar’s demand for internet bandwidth has grown on an exponential scale in recent times, largely driven by the e-gaming industry. This sector, and Gibraltar’s finance centre too, have a high dependency on state-of-the-art communications and Gibtelecom has been committed to investing in providing robust and diverse national and international fibre optic routes.
The EIG high bandwidth fibre optic system will not only complement existing routes but also provide Gibraltar with an alternative submarine path, without the limitations on capacity or the incidence of interruptions that face land based routes.
The cable which has a current capacity of 3.84 terabits along the entire route, connects three continents and provides seamless interconnection with other major cable systems connecting Europe, Africa, Asia and North America. The submarine cable was landed successfully in Gibraltar in May last year and partial activation was recently achieved.
This project is an important step forward in building both Gibtelecom, and Gibraltar, as an international communications hub. Tim Bristow, Gibtelecom’s CEO say’s the Company is “setting up an international arm that will not only market Gibtelecom worldwide, in terms of bandwidth and transit traffic sales, but also manage the Company’s other international traffic, routes and relationships.” This is the first time in nearly 100 years that Gibraltar has had a direct commercial submarine cable. He adds that “and we can now marry it to data centres where people are looking for tax-efficient places to host their computers.”
Connectivity, he believes, is “a sort of new oil.”