Mr. Martin Shanahan:

First, I compliment the Comptroller and Auditor General on the report last week, particularly the tax element, because it sets out that there are multiple ways of calculating the effective tax rate - I think eight of them are cited in the report. It also shows that when one does an international comparison, which the World Bank has done, we have an effective tax rate of 12.4%.

On the question of how much it comes up, it probably speaks to a point Deputy Cassells raised, which is that tax is one element of the offering and it is not even necessarily the most important aspect, although that varies from company to company. The single most important thing our clients raise with us is the availability of talent, because that is what they need. It is only if a company can set up and is operating that everything else comes into being. Talent is the single most important thing.

I was in San Francisco and San Jose last week meeting CEOs, particularly those in the med-tech sector. I would say tax probably came up as an afterthought in some of the meetings and, where it did come up, it mainly related to the taxation reform that is under way in the US and had very little to do with our own tax issues.