Gold Magazine January - February 2014, Issue 34 | Page 69

banking

{money}

Impact
of Cypr

as a pillar of the economy by the government.”
In November the EC, ECB and IMF released a statement saying the economy is
doing better than expected and that Cyprus
is on course to meet the terms of its bailout.
It said: “All fiscal targets have been met
with considerable margins,… prudent
budget execution, and a less severe deterioration of economic activity than originally
projected.”

us

banking

crisis

“minimal” fo
r expats

T

he headlines
were full of the
woes of the Cypriot economy
in March this
year, but much
of the predicted
hardship has
bypassed expatriates living on the island. So says Expatriate
Healthcare which recalls how customers of
the two biggest banks in Cyprus saw millions of euros stripped from their savings
and austerity measures put in place.
The €10 billion (£8.4 billion) bailout by
the European Commission (EC), European
Central Bank (ECB) and International
Monetary Fund (IMF) was newsworthy,
the expatriate website notes, but what of
the expats on the
ground? Those
living in Cyprus
did not flee when
the news broke in
March and many
did not have their
cash tied up in the
system, it says.
Carl McCann, an

expat on the island, told The Telegraph:
“The talk is all about gloom and doom,
but in my opinion Britons living here tend
to keep their savings back in the UK or
elsewhere.”
Many believe that the situation has been
overstated and services such as accountancy, shipping and legal work have fared
well due to their basis in the international
market.
There are also a number of new developments that have been built with foreign
buyers in mind, showing how the island is
looking abroad for investment.
April and May did see a dip in the property
market, but this had recovered by July and
the government has introduced a number
of incentives to lure foreign buyers to the
island.
These include a cut
from 18% VAT to 5%
when someone from
overseas purchases a
property for their own
use.
Vasilis Hadjivassiliou,
partner at PwC in
Limassol, said: “The
property market is seen

Britons living
here tend to keep
their savings
back in the UK or
elsewhere

The Everything Store:
Jeff Bezos and the Age
of Amazon
By Brad Stone (Bantam Press, 2013)

T

R.R.P. £18.99 (£12.72 from amazon.com.uk)
he winner of the 2013
Financial Times and Goldman
Sachs Business Book of the
Year Award is the definitive
biography of the company
that placed one of the first and largest
bets on the Internet and forever changed
the way we shop and read. Stone tells
the story of Amazon’s development from
its meagre beginnings to the present
situation where it is growing irresistibly and
he is quite open about the negative side of
this development, both for the company’s
employees and its competitors. Amazon
started off delivering books through the
mail but its visionary founder, Jeff Bezos,
wasn’t content with being a bookseller.
He wanted Amazon to sell everything
and at disruptively low prices. To achieve
that end, he developed a corporate
culture of relentless ambition and secrecy.
Compared to tech’s other elite innovators
– Jobs, Gates, Zuckerberg – Bezos is
a private man but he stands out for his
restless pursuit of new markets, leading
Amazon into ventures like the Kindle
and cloud computing, while completely
transforming the retail sector.

the international investment, finance & professional services magazine of cyprus

Gold 69