International Tax

One of the key components of any international practice is tax - and this is no exception at Milbank, where most of its transactions require leading-edge, value-added advice to enhance clients' objectives. Milbank's corporate and finance practices make similar demands on the tax practice, led at partner level by Russell Jacobs in London and by Rolf Fueger in Munich.

In the corporate arena, having U.K. and German tax support on M&A and private equity transactions provides Milbank's international investment banking and corporate clients with a coordinated structuring capability which brings to bear U.K., German and U.S. tax planning techniques and general advisory support for the providers of equity and debt alike. For example, on a recent leveraged buy-out of a German multi-national group, the firm's tax lawyers in London and New York were responsible for coordinating the financial and structural analysis across some 14 jurisdictions in which the group operated, as well as ensuring optimum after-tax profit take-out to the multi-jurisdictional investor base.

In structured finance and capital markets, the tax team takes a lead role alongside investment banking clients in developing tax- and balance sheet-efficient capital transactions across the range of U.S. and European jurisdictions. Whether it be the monetisation of a U.K. corporate’s asset portfolio, or a multi-jurisdictional collateralised debt offering, the tax team will be at the forefront of the transaction, from product development through coordination of local tax advice via a first-rate network of tax professionals.

In the field of project finance, the tax practice has deep experience of structuring tax-efficient consortia (through a variety of corporate, partnership and hybrid mechanisms) to fund a range of underlying, single-asset, pool, PFI and privatisation projects - many of them designed to arbitrage cross-border tax differentials in order to enhance the yields to debt and equity providers in different jurisdictions, but without disturbing the rationale or administration of the core project. For example, our tax, capital market and project finance lawyers are currently working with a leading U.S. investment bank which, using synthetic and derivative techniques, as well as U.S. pass-through trusts, is seeking to create, in effect, a multi-asset facility to enable a large U.K. multi-national to finance its PFI business with the U.K. government.

Partners and Counsel

Fueger, Dr. Rolf
Jacobs, Russell