Fail To Understand the Market Then You Shall Fail

An amusing article: http://www.businesstimes.com.sg/sub/news/story/0,4574,379551,00.html? (a re-post of a Reuters article?)

Basically telling the woes of the Channel Islands and how they are eying the Asian market:

"Both Jersey and Guernsey are responding by seeking new business in the fast-growing economies of Asia.

But the push to market the financial services of two micro states to the east is proving tough. Channel Island specialities such as trusts - assets held for protection by a separate legal entity - are difficult to sell to Asians like the Chinese.

'Trusts are based on a fairly esoteric branch of British law. You have to question how comfortable a first generation Beijing entrepreneur will be with the idea of handing legal title of his assets to a foreigner on an island in the Channel,' said Catherine Tillotson, head of research at Scorpio Partnership, a wealth management consultancy.

Alan Chick, a Guernsey trust professional, agrees. 'It's very difficult to persuade the Chinese to actually part with their funds. The Chinese don't understand (the trust) principle,' said Mr Chick, chairman of Guernsey-based Richmond Fiduciary Group in a phone interview from Hong Kong."

This comes off a little like a bunch of gaijin/gweilo bitching. It's the customer's fault!

Why the hell would any Asian (or persons from civil law jurisdictions) understand trusts? You have had hundred of years of selling the concept and your French and German neighbours haven't exactly bought in have they? Make a choice to go educate or sit back and watch the money flow elsewhere.

The second part is when most of the world is beckoning, why do business with the Channel Islands? Why do business with Richmond? Richmond, to me, is just a website that anyone could put up on the internet for $200. What or where is your competitive advantage?

My very livelihood (and literally a thousand others in the region and around the world) depends on me convincing Asians to settle trusts and entrust me and my organisation with their wealth. Plenty of Arabs, Argentineans, Japanese, Indonesians and Chinese hand over vast sums of money to foreigners to put into trusts - almost on a daily basis! Are these people stupid or gullible? Well some are but most are not.

Plenty of people are making a damm good living providing trust services to Asians.

So it's pretty simple: if the firms from the CI are not competitive then it's nobody's fault but your own.