Make Mine Mauritius: DeVere Group Opening Investment Banking Branch In Paradise

Consider what Mark Twain once said about Mauritius, an idyllic archipelago in the Indian Ocean about 1,200 miles east of southern Africa: “Mauritius was made first, and then heaven; and that heaven was copied after Mauritius.”

Here's the take by Nigel Green, founder and CEO of the deVere Group, one of the largest international financial services organizations in the world.

“Mauritius, with its financially competitive environment, its infrastructure, and its government’s agility and pro-business approach based on good governance and compliance procedures, is already ahead of the curve as a world-class business destination.”

Now the twain have met. DeVere announced on Wednesday that it has received an investment banking license from the Financial Services Commission of the Republic of Mauritius and expects more firms to follow suit.

Moving To Mauritius

French- and English-speaking Mauritius — where 90 percent of the nearly 1.3 million people speak an indigenous Creole — is known for its fantastic beaches, lagoons, reefs, mountain rainforests and wildlife found nowhere else on earth.

Many are endangered and many have been lost. Its inhabitants once included the legendary Dodo, which evolved into a flightless bird after settling in Mauritius four million years ago. It went extinct in the 17th century.

According to Green, Mauritius now is destined to become the Southern Hemisphere’s leading international financial center within the next decade, poaching business from other financial capitals in the southern hemisphere.

Look Out Sydney

He said, “The southern hemisphere’s international financial centers such as Sydney, Sao Paulo and Johannesburg, will be needing to up their game in order to compete with Mauritius as global financial hubs and to attract international financial services firms.”

Green said his company spent months scouting locations from which to launch its investment banking division.

“If our research reports these findings about Mauritius, it can be reasonably assumed that our global financial brands will also be coming to the same conclusions,” he said.

Multiethnic Mauritius is roughly the size of Luxembourg and the only African nation where the largest religion is Hindu. It was a Dutch, then French, then British colony before winning independence in 1968.