Author Bios
Selwyn Parker
Selwyn Parker has been a journalist for 30 years, writing for Time, Newsweek and International Business Week among other publications. He specialises in global finance and financial history. He has written three books on investment and his latest book, The Great Crash (Piatkus), is a new history of the Crash of '29 and the Depression of the thirties.
At first glance any relationship between the bankruptcy of mass automaker General Motors and that of family-owned coach-builder Wilhelm Karmann seems remote. After all, publicly-owned GM went down with $172 billion in liabilities while Germany-based Karmann has collapsed into insolvency with practically zero debt.
Remember 2&20? Probably only too well. As most of the wealthy, private clients of asset management funds know, this was the base rate many were charged for the privilege of handing over their money.
First there was Battista the founder, then Sergio the son, next Andrea the grandson, and now the latter’s young brother Paolo. For nearly 80 years, successive members of Italy’s Pininfarina family have turned the car design and engineering firm into a national monument.
If you believe the OECD’s rhetoric, tax havens are about to collapse like a house of cards before the onslaught of a G20 determined to retrieve untold trillions of lost revenue. However, the death of tax-efficient jurisdictions and their historic rules on confidentiality is greatly exaggerated.
