Biography:

Ali Akesbi is a certified chartered accountant, holding the “Expert-Comptable” (French CPA) and with 15 years’ experience in technical accounting and external audit mainly at PwC Paris / Sydney and AD Associes.

Currently Partner at AD Associes Casablanca - Morocco, he is in charge of the audit department and international desk which provide a wide range of services to foreign investors.

Biography:

Robert Trill is a tax director at Interpath Advisory, an independent advisory practice created from KPMG UK's disposal of its Restructuring practice. Having worked at leading international legal and accounting firms and at a FTSE 100 group, Robert has over 20 years of corporate tax experience. Particular areas of tax specialism for Robert include solvent and insolvent restructurings, M&A, financing transactions and complex UK and international advisory. Robert works with businesses across most industry sectors, advising clients of all sizes, from SMEs to large multinationals.

Biography:

Shashi Satyal serves as the Managing Partner of PKF T R Upadhya & Co. in Nepal (PKF Nepal), boasting an impressive track record of over 33 years in serving clients in the realm of taxation. Throughout his tenure at PKF Nepal, Shashi has played a pivotal role within the team, specializing in assurance and tax advisory services.

His extensive experience extends to handling international clients, engaging with officials from the Inland Revenue Department (IRD), as well as government organizations. Additionally, Shashi has held the esteemed position of Head of Tax and Advisory Department at PKF T R Upadhya & Co., representing clients during tax assessments, appeals for administrative review, and obtaining Advance Rulings on cross-border transactions, often serving as an expert before the Revenue Tribunal.

Shashi's professional expertise spans a wide spectrum, encompassing audit services, assurance, business advisory, taxation, investigation, and financial restructuring. His clientele includes public and private enterprises, subsidiaries of multinational corporations, manufacturing companies, banks, financial services institutions, hospitality businesses, infrastructure projects funded and multilateral agencies, and not-for-profit organizations. He possesses the knowledge and proficiency to guide clients in achieving their business objectives while offering a comprehensive array of services to foster their growth and protect their investments in Nepal.

Furthermore, Shashi Satyal has contributed significantly to the financial landscape of Nepal. He served as a member of the Accounting Standards Board in Nepal, playing a pivotal role in the development and implementation of Nepal Financial Reporting Standards (equivalent to IFRS) within the country. As a team leader and engagement partner, he has led various NFRS/IFRS convergence services and NFRS/IFRS financial statement audits across diverse sectors, including banking, government and regulatory bodies, manufacturing, insurance, hydropower, tourism, credit rating agencies, and the service industry.

Shashi Satyal holds a bachelor's degree in commerce with honors from Delhi University and is a qualified chartered accountant certified by the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India. He is also a fellow member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nepal, cementing his status as a respected and highly capable professional in the field.

Biography:

Elena is a Barrister with over 15 years’ experience in contentious financial regulation and corporate and white-collar crime. Elena is currently Senior Legal Counsel at Wells Fargo Bank in Financial Crime Legal. Elena previously worked at the Financial Conduct Authority in Enforcement Legal advising on regulatory/civil Enforcement cases against both firms and individuals and conducting litigation and advocacy before the Regulatory Decisions Committee, the Upper Tribunal and Courts. Elena also advised on contentious Authorization refusal cases and on Supervisory action. Elena started her career as a Criminal Barrister before holding positions in city law firms specializing in Financial Regulation, economic crime and internal investigations and has particular expertise in AML, Fraud, ABC and Sanctions.

Elena is a contributing author to Simon’s Taxes and Tolley’s Practice Management Tools.

Biography:

Therese advise Swedish and foreign companies in VAT issues. Therese is specialised and mostly hired when the Swedish Tax Agency’s files lawsuits against companies concerning VAT.

Therese has experience from the Swedish Tax Agency, as a Law Clerk at the Stockholm Administrative Court, working with VAT for Mazars and EY, as well as other firms. She lectures paralegal law students at Påhlmans Institute of commerce. She has also published several articles in Bloomberg, in Svensk Skattetidning, and Legally Yours focused on VAT.

Therese also gives advice when clients move into new markets or enters a new business field, and for the ongoing business. She also help her clients in obtaining advance rulings from the Swedish Skatterättsnämnden.

With a broad mindset, integrity, deep knowledge, and an attitude to always look for the customer needs Therese has a great track record for her clients. Her clients are in many branches; IT, real estate, animation, outdoor life, construction, building, finance etc.

Biography:

Ximena draws from prior experience in public law and has a successful tax advisory and litigation practice representing clients in Judicial Review, High Court claims and substantive tax appeals in the Tribunals and beyond.

In the span of her 18-year career, she has represented and appeared on behalf of taxpayers in complex Judicial Review proceedings and group appeal litigation for 350+ appellants with tax at stake of several £100m.  She is uniquely familiar with procedure, FTT rules, costs and alternative dispute resolution strategy.

Ximena has published numerous articles, case reports, commentaries and text books on tax legislation and caselaw.

Her clients include a variety of media personalities, HNW individuals, OMBs and multinational corporates.

Biography:

Phil Vernon is the Head of Business Rates projects at PwC, and has been advising clients on local property tax issues for the last 15 years. He was formerly Head of Business Rates for Liberata UK, who provided an outsourced revenues service for Sheffield City Council.

At PwC, Phil provides public and private sector clients with advice on complex rating matters, provides legal analysis on points of law and advises clients on how rating practice interacts with rating law. Phil also assists corporate clients in their rating appeals, up to and including Valuation Tribunals and the Upper Tribunal (Lands Chamber).

Phil has been an Honors member of the Institute of Revenues, Rating and Valuation (IRRV) since 2002 and has 30 years experience in local taxation law and practice.

Biography:

Debbie trained as a Chartered Accountant with Coopers and Lybrand in London before moving into exam training in 1998 and becoming CTA qualified in 2000.

Debbie has taught tax and accountancy across various qualifications for over twenty years and was a member of the ICAEW tax exam team for a number of years.

Debbie joined Tolley Exam Training in 2004. She teaches across the ATT and CTA qualifications and is involved in material production.

Biography:

James Kessler KC is particularly interested in taxation of foreign domiciliaries, offshore entities of all kinds, and trusts, wills and charities. Other interests include prosecution of tax crime in complex cases, particularly along the avoidance/evasion faultline, and freedom of information.

James has practiced as a barrister since 1985 and was appointed QC in 2003. He is also a member of the Bar of Northern Ireland.

He is in Band 1 in Chambers Directory in the Private Client Tax category, with a reference to "acumen and remarkable thoroughness of thought".

James is one of the founders of the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners, for whom he drafted the STEP Standard Provisions, and a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Taxation.

James has received the Geoffrey Shindler Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Profession (STEP Private Client Awards, 2011).

James is a contributor to Tolley’s Tax Planning title.

Biography:

Simon McKie is the Chairman of McKie & Co which won the ‘Best Tax Consultancy Team’ award in the 2012 and 2015 Taxation Awards and the Society of Trust & Estate Practitioners award for ‘Boutique Firm of the Year’ in 2009/2010 and was most recently shortlisted in 2019.

Simon specialises in private client taxation providing bespoke tax advice to solicitors, accountants and private clients themselves.  This includes inheritance tax planning, advice on domicile and changes of residence status, offshore trusts, the remittance basis, the making of voluntary disclosures to HMRC and the review of existing tax structures.  In addition, he has a particular expertise in the management of complex tax legislation and the provision of expert witness reports.

He is the joint author of Tolley’s Estate Planning and McKie on Statutory Residence.

He is a member of both the Private Client (UK) and Private Client (International) sub-committees of the Chartered Institute of Taxation and a member of the Technical Committee of the Society of Trust & Estate Practitioners.

Biography:

David Heaton FCA CTA has specialised in employment taxes, national insurance (social security taxes) and tax investigations since the late 1980s. After senior positions in Big 4 firms and partnership for 13 years in a national firm, he became a sole practitioner in 2014.

His main focuses are:

• PAYE
• employment status and temporary/agency workers
• employee share incentives
• share valuation for tax purposes
• expatriate/migrant workers
• tax investigations

He was the original author and for many years the editor of CCH's British NIC Guide, but he is now the editor of Tolley's National Insurance and a contributor to Taxwise, Tolley's Tax Planning, Simon's Taxes and Taxline Tax Planning on employment taxes and NIC matters.

As a lecturer for professional institutes and training businesses he is known for his down-to-earth and often irreverent style. He was briefly a member of HMRC's GAAR panel, invited because of his nationally recognised expertise in employment taxes, but he resigned after a press expose that revealed that he advised clients and fellow professionals as well as HMRC.

He has chaired the ICAEW's Employment Taxes & NIC Committee for many years and is a past chairman of the Institute's Tax Faculty. He is also a member of two relevant technical sub-committees of the CIOT.

Biography:

My goal is to help entrepreneurs grow their business in France and abroad by providing them financial, accounting and tax advice and solutions.

15+ years of experience in Finance, External & Internal Audit in a Big 4 Accounting Firm and Industry.

Experience in working with all management levels in cross cultural environments

spanning Asia, Americas, Europe, Middle-East & Africa.

Proven ability to demonstrate a comprehensive approach to resolve complex issues and to achieve targets / meet deadlines despite challenging situations.

Biography:

Helen Wood is the founder of HLN WD TX, a share schemes and employee incentives advisory business.

She qualified as a CA with ICAS in 2009 and has worked as a specialist reward and incentives advisor for 17 years, spending 13 of those at KPMG followed by 3 ½ years as an Associate Director at RSM. Helen has worked with businesses ranging from start-ups to fully listed companies, spanning owner-managed businesses, private equity portfolio companies, and AIM listed businesses.

She advises on a wide range of employee share schemes and employment related securities matters including the design and implementation of effective management and employee incentives; tax valuation of employment related securities, buy and sell side transaction support, HMRC compliance, tax due diligence and employee ownership trust transactions.

Biography:

I am a senior tax consultant in Menzies Private Client team. My work involves a lot of international clients moving in and out of the UK, particularly from Europe, the US and Australia. The advice is from both an individual and employer context, advising on employer obligations plus the application of the remittance basis and overseas workday relief.

Another area I do a lot of work in is Inheritance tax and succession planning in general.

In addition to the normal array of OMB clients I work with a lot of people in the property sector, barristers and new tech start-ups.

Biography:

Cassandra has spent her career specialising in providing tax advisory services to private companies, owner managers and their businesses, advising on all aspects of taxation and their interaction. Cassandra enjoys analysing the ever-changing tax legislation in detail to provide tax efficient solutions that that are commercial and understandable. Cassandra is also a member of the CIOT Owner Managed Business Committee. Cassandra has co-authored Tolley’s Tax Planning For Owner Managed Businesses 2020-21, with her colleagues Craig Simpson and Richard Coombs at Bates Weston Tax Advisory Ltd.

Biography:

Nicole started her career working in the tax division at Ernst & Young, where she passed her ACA and CTA (ATII) examinations.

Nicole enjoyed studying so much she thought it might be ‘fun’ to experience a career at the front of the classroom and joined BPP as a tax tutor in 2000. She loves the challenge of breaking down a complex concept and explaining it in understandable terms.

At BPP Nicole taught tax papers for all accountancy qualifications as well as for ATT and CTA. She also produced teaching material for tax courses.

Nicole was responsible for managing relationships with key tax courses’ clients and in particular designing, managing and teaching on bespoke client courses.

As well as having extensive experience delivering face to face courses, Nicole has much experience of teaching online live courses, pioneering the use of interactive tools to engage students in remote study.

Nicole joined Tolley Exam Training in 2017 and teaches mainly in our London centre. She is also subject manager for ATT Paper 1 and CTA APS Individuals and as such is involved in the updating of material for these papers and giving exam feedback. Nicole has also written a number of articles for Taxation magazine.

Biography:

Dominic Lawrance is a partner in Charles Russell Speechlys LLP's private client division, specialising in individual taxation, trusts, and tax-efficient philanthropy. With Catrin Harrison, he is an author of Clarke’s Offshore Tax Planning: Foreign Domiciliaries. He is a recognised expert on the UK tax regime applicable to foreign domiciliaries and structures created by them.

Biography:

Since 2006, Jordi is Director of GD Global Mobility, the division of Gesdocument (www.gesdocument.com/en), specialized in advising and managing international mobility and assist international businesses and individuals to get established in Spain.

Jordi has a degree in Labor Relations at Universitat de Barcelona. Throughout his 19 years of experience advising major international corporations on global mobility issues, corporate and personal immigration laws and procedures in the European Union, Asia and America, he has been able to develop his professional skills in highly relevant companies such as PwC and E&Y.

During his professional activity, he has gained experience in the field of expatriate taxation, payroll, and international social security. Due to his international activity, he’s member of the most important international associations in this field such as EURA, ERC Worldwide and he’s also Chairman of Expat SIG at Leading Edge Alliance (LEA), one of the world’s largest professional law firm associations.

He was also an associate professor at both ESADE and ISDE, main business schools in Spain, and directs international conferences on expatriation issues related to Spain.

He is also co-author of the Immigration Guide for Investors of the Ministry of Industry and Commerce.