Aegon USA Investment Management Inc.

Nearly two years after the collapse of Enron, the collapse of the Parmalat food group has once again shed an unwelcome spotlight on the offshore sector of the Cayman Islands. Although it had nowhere near the level of Enron's more than 600 Cayman-registered subsidiaries, Parmalat nonetheless had a handful of subsidiaries or affiliated entities incorporated on the island, including an exempted mutual fund, and media reports have suggested one or more of them may have been used to hide assets for a group whose insolvency may be as much as €10 billion (US$12.6 billion).