Biography:

I am a Partner at Morton Fraser, based in Edinburgh, and I head the firm's Corporate Division. I am dual-qualified (Scotland and England/Wales), having practised in England for seven years before moving to Scotland and becoming Scots qualified in 1999.

I am a former winner of the Law Awards of Scotland's 'Corporate Lawyer of the Year' award and my corporate and commercial practice mainly advises owner-managed SMEs, with particular expertise in private equity/angel investment (advising investees as well as investors), company share/asset sales and purchases, joint ventures, corporate restructurings, contractual commercial matters (agency, distribution and franchising etc), IP, IT and data protection.

Since 2011, my team has advised the winners of the Converge Challenge, an annual competition run by Heriot-Watt University to support the next generation of research entrepreneurs in Scotland. I am also a member of Heriot-Watt University's Innovation Advisory Group and Morton Fraser's Management Board.

Biography:

Kim is a director in BDO’s Real Estate and Construction Group and one of the firm's UK-REIT specialists. She has led a number of groups through the UK-REIT conversion process as well as being an ongoing adviser to a number of UK-REITs.

Kim has over 17 years’ experience in taxation including a secondment to the British Property Federation. Aside from her REIT experience, Kim has other clients in the property sector: investors, developers (including residential developers) and funds. Kim is a Member of the Chartered Institute of Taxation.

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:

Lilian Leong is a Senior Manager in William Buck New South Wales’ Tax team. With almost a decade of experience, Lilian specialises in both Corporate and International Tax and works closely with high net wealth individuals and multinational companies. As well as obtaining a Bachelor of Law and a Bachelor of Applied Finance, Lilian has a Graduate Diploma of Legal Practice and has been admitted as a lawyer in NSW.

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:

Heleen Broer is specialising in Dutch and international tax law, Heleen focuses on mergers and acquisitions, private equity transactions, and corporate reorganisations. She advises a wide range of private clients, including listed, Dutch, international and multinational companies, on a broad range of complex cross-border tax matters, including value added tax and wage tax matters.

Biography:

Craig Simpson is a Tax Partner and owner of Bates Weston Tax LLP and Bates Weston Tax Advisory Limited. He specialises in providing tax advice to privately owned companies and high net worth families.

Craig set up his own advisory practice back in 2016 having held a number of senior positions in the national accountancy firms, seeing a gap in the market for a high quality, service focused advisory business. Advising across the range of tax matters relevant to the owner managed business. Craig particularly enjoys advising on complex reorganisations and reconstructions and developed a specialism in this area.

Craig regularly writes in the tax press and presents to fellow professionals and clients. Craig is also the author of Tolley’s Tax Planning for OMBs and consultant editor for the OMB module on TolleyGuidance.

Biography:

Dora is a Certified Public Accountant with 25 years’ experience. She joined PKF in 1998, and since then has continuously worked on a client-based approach, focusing on quality and accuracy.

She has dealt with high profile clients and has a thorough understanding of corporate issues, business processes and customer needs, advising on a wide range of tax issues. Her expertise in assurance and tax compliance extends from the hotel and tourism sector to retail businesses.

Biography:

Beth Noy is a Tax Manager at Bates Weston Tax Advisory Limited. She specialises in providing tax advice to owner-managed businesses and high net worth families. Beth enjoys working with individuals to understand their big picture and prides herself on ensuring the tax advice delivered fits with their goals and is explained without the jargon.

Biography:

Raminta is a Chartered Accountant for more than 10 years, working with international businesses. She is now a Chief Executive Officer running accountancy firm through which she continues to offer various tax services. She is experienced accounting and corporate tax adviser from SMEs to large multinationals, across many industry sectors.

Biography:

John is a Chartered Accountant and Chartered Tax Advisor, who trained with one of EY’s predecessor firms. That training contract was followed by a long career at EY, specialising in integrated US/UK income, capital, and estate tax planning.

Part of that practice at EY involved advising international professional partnerships conducting business in the UK. Expertise in this specialist area led to John being recruited to go ‘in-house’ with one of the leading US law firms and spending eight years as Regional Tax Director (EMEA) for White & Case. This was followed by a return to public practice, first with Frank Hirth and latterly with Blick Rothenberg.

John is a member of both HMRC’s Expat Tax Forum and HMRC’s Expat/NIC Strategy Group. He has lectured extensively on US tax topics. His publishing credits include being a member of the writing team on “A Guide to the UK/US Tax Treaty” (LexisNexis 2003), and a past contributor to the ‘Working in the UK’ and ‘Working Overseas’ sections of Tolley’s Tax Planning.  John has also had articles published in “Tax Planning International Review”, “Tax Management International Journal” and “The BNA Daily Tax Report”.

Outside work, John’s interests include photography, fly fishing, playing tournament bridge and learning to play the piano.

Biography:

John Holland is a Stock Market expert with over 25 years’ experience advising companies about stock market flotation in the UK. His focus is steering companies through the flotation and fundraising process on AIM (The Alternative Investment Market), The London Stock Exchanges Main Market (Standard and Premium sectors), and other UK stock markets such as Aquis. He is a regular author on UK stock market flotation related subjects and has chaired or presented over 70 conferences and seminars about stock market topics in the UK and overseas.

John is Managing Director of Holland Bendelow, the UK’s longest established stock market flotation consultants. The firm specialises in taking companies from feasibility stage through to a successful flotation. Holland Bendelow’s clients range in size from early stage growth companies to large global brands valued at £1b plus. The firm advises on pre-IPO fundraisings, IPO fundraisings, Cash Shell transactions (reverse takeovers), enhancing company valuation, stock market regulation, effective investor relation strategies and other flotation related areas.

Prior to Holland Bendelow, John held senior roles at The London Stock Exchange, including Head of UK regional operations, with responsibility for the AIM Stock Market and The Main Market. He was heavily involved in the growth of AIM from its inception to becoming established as the world’s most successful growth market. John also led The London Stock Exchange’s Regional Advisory Groups, who play a key role in formulating future stock market strategies.

Biography:

Claire started tutoring students whilst at University studying for a Maths degree.

She joined Deloitte in 2003 where she worked in the Expatriate Tax team dealing with secondments to and from the UK. Whilst working at Deloitte, Claire studied both ATT and CTA and also continued to tutor GCSE/A Level maths students in her spare time.

Given her love of tax and teaching, after qualifying for CTA Claire joined BPP where she trained students in ATT, CTA, ICAEW,ACCA and AAT qualifications. She was also involved in producing materials for the ATT and CTA courses.

Claire is known for bringing her wacky methods into classrooms and in June 2009 she had her maths notes published into a GCSE textbook 'Maths the Wacky Way'. Claire also has popular videos on YouTube to assist maths students.

In early 2011, she joined the Tolley Exam Training team and teaches across the CTA and ATT qualifications in our London venue. Claire is also head of our online courses, looking after the OTL courses and the Tolley Academy.

Biography:

Rory Mullan KC is a barrister specialising in revenue law. He advises individuals, trustees and companies on a wide range of taxation matters. He also represents taxpayers in disputes before the Tax Tribunals and Courts.

Rory contributes to Tolley's Property Taxation.

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:

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:

Angela is an Associate Director at ForrestBrown and leads on the delivery of Patent Box relief claims for clients. She has more than a decade of experience with Big Four accounting and specialist R&D firms and is passionate about the benefits of Patent Box. Based in ForrestBrown’s Scotland office, Angela provides dedicated local support to ensure that Scottish businesses are maximising their reward for investment in innovation, as well as working with businesses across the UK.

Biography:

Sten Günsel is a Partner at RSM Ebner Stolz with a core focus on international tax law and Global Employer Services for more than 20 years. As a qualified tax advisor and attorney-at-law, he provides strategic guidance to global corporations and expatriates on all questions relating to cross-border taxation, international assignment policies, and regulatory compliance. With a background in legal studies and certification as a specialist in international tax law, Sten combines legal proficiency with practical business insight to deliver holistic tax strategies for international clients.