Bermuda is well positioned to take on the next wave of business that comes to its shores, according to a top lawyer.In an interview with The Royal Gazette, Tim Faries, partner at Appleby (Bermuda), who specialises in insurance, said the Island has all of the pieces in place required to be a top business centre.But he believes that it needs to promote itself better as a place to do business and domicile of choice by playing to its key strengths, including a proven track record of success and a strong regulatory environment.Mr Faries said that while initial meetings between the public and private sectors had been successful, Government needed to deliver on its words and really show its commitment to international business in terms of action, in addition to being aware of what its competitors such as Cayman, the British Virgin Islands, Jersey and Guernsey, were doing to add weight to their cause.Mr Faries said that the trend of an over-capitalised market with companies buying back their own shares, and the recent spate of mergers and acquisitions, including Validus and IPC, Alterra and most recently Ace's takeover of New York Life's Korea operations, looked set to continue unless there was a big catastrophe.He welcomed claims from Axis Capital Holdings' chairman Michael Butt that in the event of a sudden need to recapitalise the reinsurance sector next month 80 percent of the capital would go to Bermuda and said that it proved the Island continued to be an attractive proposition to companies.“I think we as a jurisdiction are not as focused on the fact that we are in a competitive position, that our customers have choices and we need to be continually and aggressively sell them the proposition that we are an attractive place to do business,” he said.Mr Faries said that the key for insurers was Bermuda achieving Solvency II equivalence, particularly as it related to captives with the two-tiered approach adopted by the Bermuda Monetary Authority (BMA), which may result in some hard decisions having to be made.Admitting that jurisdictions such as Guernsey, which announced last month it would not be seeking Solvency II equivalence and the financial regulators raising doubts over the benefits of mutual recognition status for its captive industry, could have a potential competitive advantage, Mr Faries said the factors of regulatory efficiency and ease of use were also among the top considerations for captive owners when deciding where to be based.He said that Bermuda needed to continue working aggressively to promote itself positively in order to attract and retain good quality businesses and people.Mr Faries said it was important to sit up and take notice of top CEOs like Ace's Evan Greenberg who in December warned that the Island had some serious work to do to improve and strengthen its attractiveness as a place to conduct business.“Those kind of perceptions shape people's reality and either drive them to or away from our shores,” he said.In his experience, a number of companies had said the work permit term limit process was for more efficient than it had been in the past, while others had no issues with it, but he said that the whole issue remained a challenge which some of Bermuda's competitors had used to their advantage and Government and the private sector needed to work on improving the system and ensure that it was not seen as being unfriendly to international business.Mr Faries said that the recession had impacted all parts of the economy, with job cuts in international business, local service providers and the construction industry.But he subscribed to Mr Butt's view that Bermuda's re/insurance companies were expanding overseas rather than leaving the Island, with most maintaining their operations in the country, and the growth into other markets was part of a “natural evolution”.“We as a jurisdiction shouldn't be too afraid about that,” he said. “So long as we are seeing an equivalent inflow to the outflow, which itself is naturally expected in a mature economy such as ours.”Despite experiencing a bigger outflux of businesses than those coming in during the past two years, Mr Faries, a number of whose clients have redomiciled their corporate head offices to Ireland and Switzerland in recent years, said that contrary to a report in Reactions magazine last month that the Island's infrastructure was over burdened, Bermuda was ready for the next wave with spaces available in its schools and plenty of office space and housing on offer.Linking the escalation in crime and violence over the past couple of years in part to educational issues, he said that a safe and stable environment needed to be maintained for international business to operate in and it was crucial to produce a talented and dynamic workforce to sustain it.While acknowledging that it was necessary for Government to raise revenue, Mr Faries said that last year's two percent increase in payroll tax had had a significant effect on many companies, as their biggest expense, particularly at a time when shareholders were looking for a return on their investments.Turning to the issue of the US tax threat, he said that it wasn't the first or the last time America had looked offshore for revenue, however despite the Neal Bill going through several Congresses in its various forms since 2001, it was never passed, and he was confident that the message delivered by Government and its agencies including Business Bermuda, as well as the Association of Bermuda Insurers and Reinsurers (ABIR), about the Island's role in providing re/insurance to the US market would get through to the American voter.“I think our biggest issue as a jurisdiction and being part of the offshore world is to differentiate good quality from the poor quality,” he said. “We are a small place, we don't have a significant podium to be able to get our message across and there is a lot of misconception that offshore is to do with tax havens or suitcases full of cash, but none of that has anything to do with the reality.”He commended Government for taking a leading role in hosting the 2011 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information for Tax Purposes and signing tax information exchange agreements (TIEAs) with significant global players.