The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland (ICAS) has strengthened its tax focus with the appointment of Elspeth Orcharton, former tax partner with Ernst & Young LLP, as assistant director of taxation.
Elspeth worked with Ernst & Young for 15 years during which time she led the Scottish transaction tax team and the firm’s public sector tax practice in Scotland.
In her role with ICAS, she will be responsible for the corporate and international tax arenas, including influencing policy areas such as UK competitiveness and the simplification agenda. Elspeth joins the Institute part time going to full time on completion of a psychology degree which she is currently studying.
Having qualified as a chartered accountant in 1985 after training with the then Price Waterhouse, Elspeth has a long association with the Institute; including roles on a number of ICAS tax committees.
Derek Allen, director of taxation at ICAS, commented: “We are delighted that Elspeth has joined the tax division at ICAS. Her strong track record will further strengthen our offering to members and help influence the tax landscape.”
Taxand, the world’s largest global organisation of tax advisors to multinational businesses, is pleased to announce the appointment of Ian Fleming, a Managing Director with Alvarez & Marsal Taxand UK, as Taxand’s Global Transaction Tax Service Line Leader.
Ian brings 17 years’ experience in corporate and international tax advisory to the role, with particular expertise in transaction tax and mergers and acquisitions for private equity firms. He will lead Taxand’s team of transaction tax experts across the organisation’s 50 countries to further develop client relationships and enhance the sharing of collective knowledge to continue providing high quality tax advice for Taxand clients.
Ian has vast experience in advising large and mid-market private equity firms on acquisitions and disposals and has led a raft of international due diligence projects from both sell and buy-side perspectives. He also advises portfolio groups on their post-acquisition strategy, helping them improve their tax profile and prepare for exit or refinancing.
Ian also brings experience in structuring transactions’ tax efficiency to maximise returns to investors on specific cases, including multi-jurisdictional acquisition structures, US entities’ investments in Europe, European entities’ investments in the US and has also advised on multiple distressed debt acquisition structures.
Prior to joining Taxand, Ian was with the Private Equity Tax group of KPMG. He also has experience client-side as Head of Tax at a FTSE company. Whilst in this role, he was responsible for improving tax processes and managing all tax aspects of their acquisitions and restructuring.
In line with Taxand’s policy of reviewing its global service line leadership every two years to ensure continuous development, Ian has taken over from Geert De Neef of Taxand Belgium as the global service line leader.
Transaction Tax is one of Taxand’s eight global service lines and provides leading advice on the full spectrum of transactions including disposals, mergers and acquisitions, restructurings, IPOs and refinancing arrangements. Taxand will shortly be sharing some of this experience through publishing a global guide to M&A tax which provides an at a glance insight into the tax treatment of mergers and acquisitions, worldwide. Other Taxand service lines include International Tax, Tax Litigation, Transfer Pricing, Indirect Tax, Real Estate Tax, Compensation, Equity and Employment Tax and Individual Tax.
Frederic Donnedieu, Chairman of Taxand, said:
“We are delighted to announce the appointment of Ian Fleming as Leader of Taxand’s Global Transaction Tax Service Line. He has been a strong team member to date and the Board and I look forward to working even more closely with him in this new role. I am sure his appointment will be valuable to our clients and tax professionals alike as we look to maximise tax opportunities that can often be overlooked by clients in the heat of deal making.”
Shanda Interactive Entertainment Limited today announced the appointment of Mr. John Lee as Senior Vice President, Head of Tax.
Prior to joining Shanda, Mr. Lee was the partner in charge of the China tax department at KPMG, where he recently retired after a 35-year career. Mr. Lee advised multinational companies on international and Chinese tax planning strategies, corporate restructuring, initial public offerings, and mergers and acquisition transactions. He joined the Toronto office of KPMG in 1975 upon graduating from the University of Manitoba. He qualified as a Chartered Accountant in 1977 and was admitted as a tax partner of KPMG in 1985. He transferred to Hong Kong in 1994.
Mr. Lee was a co-editor of the Asia Pacific Taxation Journal, and has been a frequent speaker on China taxation topics at various conferences. For the last three years, he also lectured on International Tax Planning at Fudan University.
“We are delighted to welcome Mr. Lee to join Shanda as our Senior Vice President, Head of Tax,” commented Tianqiao Chen, Chairman, CEO, and President of Shanda Interactive. “Mr. Lee’s extensive cross-border management expertise is important to us as Shanda continues to expand in China and grow overseas. In addition, his 35 years of experience in corporate strategy, M&A and international tax issues is invaluable as Shanda continues its transformation into a leading interactive media group.”
About Shanda Interactive Entertainment Limited
Shanda Interactive Entertainment Limited (Nasdaq: SNDA) (“Shanda”) is a leading interactive entertainment media company in China, offering a broad array of online entertainment content on an integrated service platform to a large and diverse user base. Shanda offers its high quality entertainment content through its subsidiaries and affiliates, including Shanda Games, Shanda Literature, Ku6, and various other online community and business units. The broad variety of content ranges from massively multi-player online role-playing games (MMORPGs) and advanced casual games, to chess and board games, e-sports, literature, film, television, mobile ringtones music, and video etc. By providing a centralized platform through which Shanda can deliver its own content as well as third-party content, Shanda allows its users to interact with thousands of other users while enjoying some of the best entertainment content available in China today. Shanda: “Interaction enriches your life”.
PKF Accountants & business advisers has appointed Andrew Penman to the London tax team as Personal Tax Director.
Andrew joins from Smith & Williamson, where he spent over 16 years in the Private Client Tax Services team. The majority of his experience is with international personal tax issues, principally on tax planning for non-UK domiciled individuals and for individuals coming to the UK to live and work, or leaving the UK either temporarily or permanently.
Andrew’s work also involved acting for wealthy families, including some substantial family trusts (both UK and offshore) where capital gains tax and inheritance tax planning were the main issue, and for entrepreneurs where good personal tax planning helps maximise value when exiting a venture. His experience has also included assisting private client investment management firms in designing their annual tax reporting and capital gains tax planning systems.
Andrew said: “The current economic climate in the UK, alongside the new coalition government, means the tax landscape has already undergone a raft of changes and there will be more to come. Clients will need specialist advice and I look forward to advising and offering them the solutions they need.”
Thomson Reuters has named Taneli Ruda senior vice president of strategy for the Tax & Accounting business. In this role, Mr. Ruda will lead the ongoing growth, geographic and functional strategy development for the Tax &Accounting business – a critical role as the business continues its aggressive global growth expansion.
As head of strategy, Mr. Ruda will work across Tax & Accounting to assist, facilitate
and guide the development of strategy, and will be an active participant in acquisition
planning and corporate development, particularly related to larger, strategic acquisitions.
“Taneli’s background in identifying new growth opportunities makes him the ideal choice
to lead our strategy team,” said Roy M. Martin, Jr., president and chief executive
officer of the Tax & Accounting business of Thomson Reuters. “His experience in
coordinating and developing global, corporate-wide strategy – particularly merger and
acquisition strategy — make him a natural and welcome fit for our fast growing
business. And the timing of Taneli’s appointment is critical as our Tax & Accounting
business continues to evolve and pursue its global growth strategy.”
Prior to joining Thomson Reuters, Mr. Ruda served as vice president of strategy
development for Nokia, where he worked since 2004. In this role, he coordinated Nokia’s
corporate-wide strategy development, which included building strategic partnerships in
the Internet services space, and selecting adjacent growth avenues for the company to
pursue.
Before Nokia, he spent seven years with The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) in Stockholm
and Helsinki, developing relationships and serving clients across a wide range of
industries. Prior to BCG, he was a partner at a start-up firm that developed foreign
exchange software for corporations.
Mr. Ruda is originally from Finland and graduated from Helsinki University of Technology
with a Doctorate in technology and a Master’s in engineering. He is based in New York
City.
About Thomson Reuters
Thomson Reuters is the world’s leading source of intelligent information for businesses
and professionals. We combine industry expertise with innovative technology to deliver
critical information to leading decision makers in the financial, legal, tax and
accounting, healthcare and science and media markets, powered by the world’s most
trusted news organization. With headquarters in New York and major operations in London
and Eagan, Minnesota, Thomson Reuters employs more than 50,000 people and operates in
over 100 countries.
RSM Tenon has announced the appointment of Paul Belsman as its new Head of Tax. He succeeds Andrew Hubbard who will take on the role of Chairman of the tax practice.
Belsman was formerly Head of Tax at Vantis and before that at independent Firm Levy Gee.
eTaxJobs.com, the world’s largest job board for tax professionals, has announced that its unique visitor numbers continue to rise.
Chris Bale, CEO of eTaxJobs, said: “During the summer of 2010 we witnessed a significant increase in traffic and received over 30,000 unique monthly visitors in June, July and August. We attribute this rise to an uplift in confidence in the European, Asian and US tax markets. More employers are recruiting and tax professionals no longer feel there is a risk in moving to a new Firm or Corporate.”
“This bodes well for aspirational tax professionals who wish to accelerate their career prospects and also tax recruiters who use our network of sites extensively. We predict a significant increase in fee income for tax search firms over the next 12 months as this new market confidence translates into more placements per recruitment consultant.”
For more information about tax jobs and the global tax market please go to www.eTaxJobs.com
WTP Advisors, a global tax and business advisory consultancy, has launched a new service line called “Optimized Tax Operations” (OTO) which will help organizations add to the bottom line by improving the way they do taxes.
“One of the greatest opportunities for process improvement is in the tax arena,” says Yair Holtzman, Director at WTP Advisors, who pioneered the concept of Optimized Tax Operations. “Tax departments that do a better job aligning and integrating their processes and technology can spend less time on data processing and more time on tax analyses that can actually drive revenue.” The Optimized Tax Operations (OTO) program at WTP Advisors shows businesses how to unveil unprecedented value from their tax functions by combining operations management and operations research, process optimization, and technological expertise with federal, state and local, and international tax consulting service offerings.
“This new offering distinguishes WTP Advisors from our competitors because few other consultancies join two discrete areas – business advisory and tax services – into one offering that combines the best of both worlds,” explains Michael Minihan, Partner and Co-Founder of WTP Advisors. “Many firms have both service offerings, but none have been able to successfully integrate them.”
Organizations employ a number of formulas to improve their business operations and get the best value for the money. While many businesses will invest in business advisory services to help them improve certain operations (like supply chains), few apply the same type of rigorous analysis to their tax departments.
“The tax department rarely has been charged with looking inside itself with regard to the efficiency and effectiveness of its internal operations; yet in any organization, tax can turn out to be an untapped area of extraordinary value,” says Holtzman.
The tide is changing, he believes, because today’s corporate tax function faces substantial challenges, including lower risk tolerance, a shortage of tax talent, higher expectations for
transparency, more stringent regulations, and a demand for the tax function to play a more central role within its respective enterprise.
For many companies, the inability to meet these challenges has resulted in internal control deficiencies, challenges in external reporting, financial restatements, and in some cases a general lack of confidence in their internal tax function. To fix some of these broken processes, organizations are taking a fresh look at their operating strategies and seeking innovative solutions to transform their tax operations to meet and exceed the expectations of their stakeholders.
“Based on conversations I have had with senior leadership in the tax departments of many of the Fortune 500 over the past few years, there is a significant interest and focus on improving upon processes within the tax function,” says Holtzman. “An organization that boosts performance in its tax department can reduce the cost and time it takes to perform the requisite tax function, as well as improve quality, improve year-end metrics, and reduce risks.”
For example, on the technology side, manual processes are taking place where there is a huge opportunity for automation. One department’s system may not be linked to another’s, so helping all facilities within an organization align with the same tax-connected system eliminates redundancies, reduces human error and speeds up the process and makes for a better tax deliverable.
“Organizations are continually reminded of the need to understand and improve their business processes. Governments demand it. Certification Agencies demand it. Auditors demand it. Competition demands it,” says Holtzman.
