Leaders of Invesco quickly arrived at the conclusion that Bermuda was the best place to redomicile to after waving goodbye to London.

With more than $500 billion of assets under management, the company looked around at its options and picked the Island because of its legal and regulatory environment and the similarities of those to the laws of the US state of Delaware.

Although it has 5,500 employees in 19 countries, in the near-term Invesco is likely to have only a 'virtual' presence on the Island, without an office or employees.

Its headquarters remain in Atlanta. However, Invesco may open up a physical presence at a later date, according to chief administrative officer Colin Meadows who met with Premier Ewart Brown yesterday.

The Premier held a special welcome for the Mr. Meadows and Invesco's director of sales Marquette Chester, in recognition of Invesco's global size and importance and its decision to come to Bermuda.

Invesco is the eighth largest asset management company in the world. It shifted its primary stock exchange listing to Wall Street from London on Tuesday to reflect its higher percentage of US shareholders.

Until mid-2007 the company had less than 50 percent of US shareholders, but when that balance shifted above the halfway point it put Invesco in a position where it was suddenly required to comply with the regulations of both the UK's Financial Services Authority and the US's Securities and Exchange Commission. In order to simplify life and provide clearer transparency, the company decided to move its primary listing to the New York Stock Exchange.

At the same time it looked to redomicile without incurring tax obligations on its shareholders. Bermuda best fitted the bill.

Premier Dr. Brown said he wants to keep Bermuda in the forefront of the minds of top companies that may be considering redomiciling at the same time as giving an official thank you to Invesco for choosing Bermuda.

He added: "It is important to note that since 1998 there has been an increase of almost 3,000 international companies in Bermuda and I'm proud to state that. It means that Bermuda is a healthy marketplace and remains attractive to the best companies on the planet."

Invesco's Mr. Meadows said: "We are quite excited to be domiciled in Bermuda. It was an easy choice for us. We had an opportunity to change our domicile and our listing so that we could have one regulatory body overseeing the company (the SEC) and we looked around the world and considered a number of domiciles and settled on Bermuda."

Listing the reasons that led to the decision in Bermuda's favour, he said: "One was that the legal and regulatory environment here was quite strong, it is very much linked to the US/Delaware laws that we are quite comfortable with. The business environment is strong.

"We looked at some of the other companies that are domiciled here in Bermuda."

Mr. Meadows said a number of the large companies domiciled in Bermuda were recognised and respected by Invesco, which presented a further reason in the Island's favour.

He went on: "The third factor was we wanted to make sure the transaction in moving our domicile was tax neutral for our shareholders.

"Moving to the US would not have been a tax neutral situation. When it came down to it, it was a very short list of places that we considered and Bermuda was at the top."

Mr. Meadows said it was yet to be decided if the company would create open an office on the Island, he added: "There is a business infrastructure. We certainly would not rule out adding employees here."

Invesco is also hopeful of picking up money managing business from clients and institutions in Bermuda.