Bermuda is well-equipped to deal with the impact of the global financial crisis because of its ability to adapt to changing conditions.

That is the view of Peter Marber, managing director and head of GEM fixed income and currencies of Halbis HSBC, who gave a presentation on the global financial crisis at the Fairmont Hamilton Princess hotel this week.

Mr. Marber said that because the Island was service-oriented and did not rely on big industries such as auto manufacturing, it could be very flexible to meet global needs.

"I think a country like Bermuda is very flexible and malleable," he said.

"It can adapt very quickly to the global environment.

"It does not have a big reliance on retail or factories, so it should not get hurt the way other markets do."

Mr. Marber, who has spent 22 years working on Wall Street, said that Bermuda's banking sector was small compared to other countries and its systems were not very exposed to the worldwide economic downturn, unlike Switzerland, which has a GDP driven by banking, and therefore carried much greater amounts of risk. But he added the Island's insurance industry could take a big hit from the crisis.

"I think that most of the banking in Bermuda is probably local in orientation and my guess is it is really to support local industry, construction, development and the tourism businesses, but I do not think it has the exposure of the global financial markets," he said.

"The Bank of Bermuda is probably no better or worse probably than any other institution.

"The big problems have happened with the opaque risk or lack of transparency that the large national banks have been sitting on and the nervousness that the opaqueness creates."

Mr. Marber's talk focused on the global financial crisis and the potential for different types of crises developing on an unprecedented scale, looking further ahead at what will emerge as a result, with developing nations closing the gap on the Group of Seven (G7) big players.

"We are talking about types of crises that we have not seen ever in the history of the world," he said.

"The current recession that we see is probably the first synchronised economic and financial collapses that the world has ever seen.

"This is the first time the crisis did not emerge out of an emerging market, which is probably what is going to make this one of the most vicious down drafts - I do not think markets have been taken down this badly before in my professional career this fast."

Mr. Marber, who was also doing a book signing session for his latest publication 'Seeing the Elephant: Understanding Globalisation from Trunk to Tail' at the event, reckons there will be areas of recovery, but that the markets will not return to pre-crisis levels due to people's perception that prices were already too expensive two or three years ago.

But he believes the crisis would provide some investors with an opportunity to make money if they got into the markets when they were down and subsequently experienced an upturn in fortunes, while others would lose out and be wary of going back to invest again.

"I think the key is to not let your previous decisions affect your forward view because then you go from making a mistake to make another one, and so on," he said.

"So you really want to let the dust settle and take stock and try to be realistic.

"One of the biggest lessons is portfolios need to be far more diversified and balanced than they have been before coming into the crisis. Secondly, we live in an age of surprises in some respects where things are so complex and interconnected that even the smallest little event can have some monumental unpredictable consequence that can shake a whole system."