Word: banking
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...least frothy, times. The current record haul for a U.S. IPO, $10.6 billion, was reaped by AT&T Wireless in April 2000--just after the great tech-stock bubble began to deflate but before anybody realized it. (The world-record holder is and apparently will remain the Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, which raised $21.6 billion...
...inherited his island from his parents, who paid about $65,000 for it 30 years ago, has also installed his own generator-powered desalinization system, which makes 600 gallons of fresh water from ocean water every six hours--enough for up to 14 people. Solar power recharges a large bank of batteries when his generator shuts down. "A lot of man-hours go into keeping up an island," says Longmaid. But a hot shower and a good movie afterward make everything worth...
...nation's banks managed assets of around $52 billion; by 2006 that figure had surged to more than $150 billion. Clearly there aren't enough Liechtensteiners to pile up that much cash. No wonder the principality has always rebuffed Berlin's demands for the names of German citizens with accounts there. Without the protection offered by its banking-secrecy provisions, Liechtenstein's financial-services boom would quickly die. Hans-Martin Uehlinger, a spokesman for LGT Group, is uttering Liechtenstein gospel when he says, "Paying taxes is the responsibility of the customer, not the bank...
...tiny Liechtenstein, bracing itself for its finest hour, is standing firm even as Germany threatens to stop the country from joining Europe's passport-free zone. "We will not cave in to German pressure. We will not disclose information about the owners of bank accounts," says government spokeswoman Gerlinde Manz-Christ. "The rogues are the ones who are evading their taxes, and that's not the people here in Liechtenstein," says Wendelin Schrädler, a rosy-cheeked butcher, as he hacks off a side of ham for a customer...
...Merkel joined the debate recently, the local newspaper, Liechtensteiner Vaterland, said she was "using Liechtenstein like a whetstone to sharpen her claws." Günther Fritz, Vaterland's editor-in-chief, says, "We're not a very patriotic people, but under pressure from Germany, everyone is banding together." Bankgeheimnis - bank secrecy - may not stir the human soul the way liberté, egalité, fraternité does, but it seems to work in Liechtenstein...