Profiles in Profit

By John Milligan-Whyte

Arman Glodjo personifies Bermuda's successful business climate — and he's just one of the many entrepreneurs who have prospered on the business-friendly island.

A hedge fund manager in his 30s, Glodjo developed the algorithms, software and business practices for client-to-client foreign exchange trading. Euromoney Magazine has called Glodjo's Bermuda company, Forexster Ltd., "the future of foreign exchange trading."

Foreign exchange trading is a $471 trillion-a-year turnover business. Banks charge an average of $500 per $1 million traded. Forexster charges $10 per $1 million traded and uses banks as clearing houses and custodians instead of nontransparent price setters. Forexster uses the established credit lines of its customers at the banks, which continue to handle all of the cash and settlements.

To top it all off, Glodjo is able to enjoy the rewards he has reaped from his efforts on one of the world's most beautiful islands, where he lives with his young family and counts amongst his neighbours Ross Perot and Michael Bloomberg.

"We have done all our best work in Bermuda," Glodjo says. "This is the best environment for clarity of thought. This is where the vision happens."

Austin Kirk, a U.S. importer in his early 30s who became an Internet retailer, is another of Bermuda's success stories. Kirk is a leading vendor of down comforters and artificial Christmas trees. He provides high quality at low prices and guarantees fast delivery. After noting that 31 percent of all consumer goods purchased in the United States in 2004 were manufactured in China, Kirk decided to move his family to Shanghai. He is incorporating a Bermuda company to develop his global importing and exporting business.

Kirk is following in the successful footsteps of entrepreneur C.V. Starr, who founded a startup company in Shanghai in 1923. In 1948 he incorporated the first of Bermuda's 1,450 reinsurance companies. AIG, his enterprise, now is a leader in the global financial services industry. Starr set up Bermuda trusts and holding companies before he expanded his business globally.

Planning ahead, thinking globally and leveraging Bermuda's business-friendly system enabled all of these hardworking entrepreneurs to succeed. Perhaps it's time that you, too, asked yourself: What can Bermuda do for me?

John Milligan-Whyte can be contacted in Bermuda at Milligan-Whyte & Smith Barristers & Attorneys.

Bermuda Makes it Better

Bermuda can take a successful business and make it even more successful. Consider Microsoft, one of the top companies in the world.

Microsoft was incorporated in Seattle in 1974. As it developed global revenues, its valuation rose by more than 17,000 percent by 1999. But the company might have done a better job of managing its wealth by incorporating in Bermuda and having subsidiaries elsewhere.

In 1999, 3,000 venture capitalists who earned $20 billion in fees arranged funding for 1,000 start-up companies. The venture capitalists incorporated all of the companies in Delaware, standard procedure in the United States. If they had focused more on maximizing return on their investments, they might have incorporated the companies in Bermuda.

Since 2001, Wall Street investment banks and leading insurance and reinsurance companies have invested $20 billion in seed capital to incorporate more than 20 start-up companies in Bermuda.

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