the tax advantages Bermuda can provide through creation of foreign sales corporations.

Mr. Jones, managing partner with Cox & Wilkinson and a director of the Bermuda International Business Association (BIBA), will address Inc. Magazine's annual "Growing the Company'' conference in Chicago.

Mr. Jones, who heads his firm's corporate department, will be one of the speakers at a conference forum called "Selling and Distributing Your Product Abroad''.

The businessmen attending the session are described as executives of mid-sized American companies with combined sales of more than $30 billion. The focus of Mr. Jones' speech will be the export and tax advantages of having a Bermuda-based foreign sales corporation (FSC).

An FSC, he told The Royal Gazette yesterday, can improve a company's profits and exports by exempting from US taxes a portion of income earned from its foreign sales.

One type of FSC is commission-based, whereby a US parent company pays a commission to its FSC for acting as its sales agent. Another type is ownership-based, whereby the FSC can buy and sell the US companies products.

In either case, Mr. Jones said, "tax benefits accrue'' to the parent company.

Mr. Jones said Bermuda had done well in attracting FSCs for major transactions such as aircraft leasing operations and less well in attracting commission FSCs.

Barbados and the US Virgin Islands are ahead of Bermuda in volumes of FSCs.

But Mr. Jones believes that by stressing Bermuda's professional international business environment and offshore services the Island "will go on increasing its share of the market.'' The foreign sales forum at the Inc. Magazine conference will be hosted by Commercial Law Affiliates, the world's largest affiliation of independent business and commercial litigation firms. Cox & Wilkinson is one of 200 members offices in more than 55 countries.