What Mr Lynwood Bell, a well-known offshore financial services industry specialist and promoter in Anguilla, wanted to get across to adults and the business community, he succeeded admirably in doing through the help of students in the top forms of the Albena Lake-Hodge Comprehensive School.
He has long contended that Anguilla, with a number of advantages over other offshore financial centres, such as no income or corporate taxes, can attract a great deal of lucrative offshore financial and business opportunities through international treaties and good marketing to boost its economy. Anguilla can also develop some of its own other business ideas to provide employment and financial prosperity for its people.
Mr Bell was instrumental in the creation of .ai Anguilla Incubator Inc. at the Albena Lake-Hodge Comprehensive School in which a number of students are owners, directors and officers. On Thursday, January 30, eleven of them participated in a “Speech Challenge” – “an evening of compelling competitive student presentations on cutting edge business ideas.” The event was an arrangement between the school and Mr Bell and was coordinated by Ms Avenella Griffith, head of the business department.
Mr Bell explained to The Anguillian what the “Speech Challenge”, which attracted a large audience of business persons and others, was all about. “The students were just demonstrating what they put together, two years ago, which is an Anguillian public company – and they were expounding some of the principles on which they built that business,” he stated.
“The students were hoping to convey that to the rest of the Anguillian population so that they can do the same. I am somewhat of a mentor for them. I think that they deserve to know how these [business ideas] work on an international scale. There has not been much of that type of training going on, as it should have been, and we are hopefully leading the way to start it. Then I am sure it will find its way into the school curriculum, the Community College and other institutions that will take it over in due course.”
Mr Bell was asked about his idea of Anguilla being “an incubator for business”. He replied: “It is ideal. We have so many advantages that are simply not being taken up as they should be, and the strange thing is that each of these is totally legitimate and often supported by foreign governments through treaties rather than being on the wrong side [of the law] or tax evasion.” He said that Anguilla does not need to be a tax haven in the negative sense. “We can operate very fully as a transparent substantive country with subsidiaries that have economic purpose and reality, and avoid all of this mysterious types of money movement that are so controversial today. We can avoid all of that and still prosper,” he stressed.
The three students declared winners of the “Speech Challenge”, by a panel of judges, were Jose Vanterpool (first): US $500; Nisha Dupuis (second): US$300; and T’arah Niles (third); US$200. These and the other participating students (Melissa Harrigan, Carrin A.W. Richardson, Sonnisha Ruan, Jaime Difo Lorenzo, Jibri Lewis, Molentiya Samuel, Jahvade Martin, Shakibah Thomas) were highly commended for their business and technology ideas by several persons who took to the platform to do so. The presentations of the winners are published elsewhere in this edition of The Anguillian.
