I was fortunate recently to be able to attend the IFC Forum's first major conference held in London, in association with the Commonwealth Secretariat. The day brought together a number of key speakers and, overall, it was a successful exercise.

Although it was arguably a case of preaching to the converted, the key point to come out of the event was just how important it is for IFCs to work together to dispel some of the myths surrounding transparency, cooperation and standards of regulation.

Whilst there is some excellent work being done behind the scenes in this respect, there is still some way to go in terms of voicing a joined-up message in the media. It is clearly in the interests of IFCs to respond in a unified manner to the allegations that are aimed their way by various campaign groups, who certainly are operating in a coordinated way.

Meanwhile, it has been interesting to note how IFCs have responded to the raft of tables and rankings that have been published recently, the Global Financial Centres Index, Financial Secrecy Index, OECD reports, Global Forum Peer Reviews, and so on.

People might question the credibility of each table or report, but what they all do is underline that IFCs are different from and in competition with each other. The end result, unfortunately for IFCs, is to create a picture of confusion rather than coordination and consistency.

It will be interesting to see how the IFC Forum develops, hopefully encouraging IFCs to engage in some meaningful debate. At the same time, whilst there is benefit in healthy competition between IFCs, the argument for them to tackle the key issues together in a credible, positive and collaborative way is getting stronger.

One of the trends in 2011 has been increasing numbers of online publishers fashioning supplements about a particular jurisdiction or about offshore finance generally.

These publishers are keen to persuade local companies to advertise and, as an incentive, will offer free editorial.

It's a dilemma for marketing teams, who have to both assess the value of the publication and - because they are one-off supplements which cannot be planned into a schedule - decide if they have any available budget to participate in the supplement. If they do sign up will the investment prove cost effective and if they don't, will competitors feature instead?

In most cases publishers offer editorial in return for advertising or even offer editorial for a fixed price, normally describing it as 'sponsored editorial'. Some of these new e-publishers are targeting the offshore marketplace for the first time.

While many of these online publications have their merits the fact is they do not write regularly about our marketplace and nor, as a result, are they likely to reach the appropriate target audience.

Ultimately, if budgets are limited, we reckon that specialist publications that have the potential to reach business introducers should outweigh publications which may only reach a general business audience, even if it is a global one.