European e-business companies should make Bermuda their first choice when it comes to choosing a location for their business.

The suggestion came from Telecommunications and E-Commerce Minister Renee Webb as she opened the second day of a London-based conference on e-commerce and offshore financial services.

Ms Webb also spoke at a dinner on Monday night and took advantage of her two speaking engagements at the conference to sell the Island to prospective e-business people and push the message: "Bermuda means business, and particularly, Bermuda means e-business.'' The conference, which was sponsored by offshore consultancy experts IOM, was billed as a chance for different jurisdictions to showcase what they were doing to create supportive environments for e-business and to show participants how they could get involved in e-business.

E-business is expected to create $450 billion in global revenue this year with the "European Net-boom'' being akin to what happened in the US over the past six years, said Ms Webb.

The swell of interest in Europe will create a net impact which would be a "quantum jump'' in the world wide volume of electronic business, she said.

Europe was "awash with venture capital funds eager to make start-up investments in high tech and Internet firms'', said Ms Webb.

"The money currently available for investment in Internet and high-technology start-ups is estimated around $10 billion, a figure which The Economist says `represents a revolution in the European markets','' she added.

She warned that this made "choosing the right place from which to do business. ..a critical consideration'', for the growing European market. And this did not have to be Europe, she noted, which The Economist had described as a place with "an infrastructure designed to drive start ups mad'', said Ms Webb.

Reasons the magazine noted for this were the relative dearth of clustered legal and accounting expertise conversant with high technology; an absence of affordable temporary office space; employment practices that discourage risk-taking and stock exchanges which emphasised investor protection, she said.

On the other hand, continued Ms Webb, "during the first three quarters of 1999, Bermuda incorporated nearly sixty new e-commerce or technology related companies''. And the Island was a perfect location for e-commerce companies, in particular those who were seeking to launch.

"For them, we are the archetypal one-stop-shop,'' she noted.

"A company can incorporate, list on the Bermuda Stock Exchange, secure venture capital and be equipped with the Island's sophisticated e-commerce support services, laws and regulation.'' The "placeless global character of the Internet'' meant European enterprises were free to do this now instead of being constrained by their geography.

"Choice reigns,'' she stressed.

And she noted: "Bermuda has taken considerable pains to make sure that in an environment of such choice, we will remain a preeminent offshore centre. Our widely acknowledged blue chip reputation as an offshore centre is something we rigorously guard.

"The Island has been untouched by scandal, unlike some other offshore sites.

We intend to keep it thus, particularly with respect to e-business.

What makes Bermuda different from the rest: Page 19 E-commerce legislation: Page 19 Webb bids to woo Euro business "Bermuda authorities have been careful to scrutinise such businesses in order to make sure their underlying activities, while legal, will do nothing to damage our reputation.'' The Island facilitated designer companies by offering clients the ability to petition the Parliament for the enactment of private legislation which allowed them to effect innovative corporate structures that would not be permitted under existent law, continued Ms Webb.

And it offered these companies the ability to set up independent subsidiary cells through segregated accounts legislation which was pioneered world-wide by Bermuda in 1990 and further revised last year to employ trust and contractual concepts consistent with the Hague Convention.

Ms Webb noted the Island also had the Electronic Transaction Act 1999 in place which assured legal standards that protected international and local customers. "We believe this is a distinctive approach particularly appropriate for an offshore venue, simultaneously building consumer confidence while sustaining a business-friendly context,'' she said.

Ms Webb added that behind that business-friendly context was Bermuda's historical support of industry self-regulation which was an approach that would be extended into the era of e-business.

"Industry service providers will co-operate with the Government in drafting a code of conduct and establishing a reporting regime, after which businesses will be free to operate within the construct of their own code,'' she said.

"As we have in the past, we will continue to vet electronic businesses wishing to operate from Bermuda but their Internet delivery methods will be self-regulating.'' Renee Webb BUSINESS BUC