The AEL training seminar will be held in Athens this year, kindly hosted by Panagopoulos Vainanidis Schina Economou in Greece from 19-22 May. Further to feedback from previous training seminars, there will be a slightly different format this year and the seminar will involve three SIGs; Corporate, Commercial Property and Corporate Tax. The topic will be “A transactions with property and tax aspects” and the Executive Committee have invited me to talk on corporate tax issues. As this topic is likely to be of interest to us, it seemed a good idea to incorporate our yearly meeting at the same time. This will give us an opportunity to raise the profile of the Corporate Tax SIG in the wider arena of AEL and to meet our colleagues in the Corporate and Commercial Property SIGs. This may also prove to be more convenient for those of you who were planning to attend both the training seminar and our SIG meeting. You will be sent invitations with a programme for the training seminar from the AEL Executive Team shortly and I hope as many of you as possible can attend.
Thank you to Lonneke Van Moorselaar of NautaDutilh for offering to host our meeting in Amsterdam this year. As we are cancelling our usual meeting (previously intended to be held either on 2nd or 9th June), Lonneke has kindly offered to host the meeting in Amsterdam next year instead. A date for next year’s meeting will be set in due course.
I propose that the Corporate Tax SIG meet on Thursday 19th May at 2pm and have a meeting for 2 hours; this will allow time to attend the events of the training seminar, which will start with a reception and informal dinner at 19:30 that evening. Instead of our usual format for our yearly meeting, we can use this meeting to discuss implementing a strategy for our SIG, what we would like to get out of being members of AEL and how we can take forward marketing initiatives to generate new business opportunities for us all. I have been privvy to seeing business plans for other AEL SIGs and, based on that information, I have drafted a business plan for us, which we can use as a starting point. This plan is intended to be a work-in-progress document for updating whenever we see fit and it is intended for us all to input our ideas and initiatives at any time throughout the year, with a formal review of the plan, perhaps yearly (or whenever we decide). I attach the draft business plan for your attention herewith and welcome your suggestions and comments about this or any points you would like to include in preparation for our meeting.
With regard to my presentation at the training seminar, ideally, my presentation will include points from all of us; with me being the spokesperson for the SIG. I therefore attach the case study for the seminar for your attention. Whilst the presentation is not intended to be a jurisdictionally comparative report, I would like you all to give me points to include on the presentation for example, issues to be considered by other lawyers when working with our counterparts when administering a large M&A deal with property and tax aspects. I propose we have a conference call to discuss this and gather our points to include on Tuesday 5th April at 10am GMT, 11am CET.
Dial in details for this call are below:
(UK) 0800 279 8162
(Outside UK) +44 (0) 20 7107 9462
Participant code: 01 83 522#
Su Rawlinson will send you a diary invitation and the conference call will be registered in the events section of AELonline (www.europeanlawyers.org). Please confirm you can make this call by registering for the call on AELonline or replying to Su directly. I hope you have all had the opportunity to register on AELonline but if you have any queries about this, please contact Su (su.rawlinson@europeanlawyers.org).
I look forward to speaking to you on 5th April.
Kind regards.
Amanda Solomon, Partner Charles Russell LLP