The Lawyer Awards 2009 - short-listed
18 June 2009
Our Private Client team was short-listed in The Lawyer Awards 2009.
Schedule 7 Finance Act 2008 radically changed the tax position for UK resident but non-domiciled (RND) individuals and offshore trusts. All advisers dealing with such clients, including wealth managers, needed to retrain in order to be able to advise clients effectively. This has been one of the most important changes in UK international tax in recent years.
We were tasked with producing detailed training for all Barclays Wealth's advisers dealing with RND clients. The aim of the training was to bring Barclays' advisers up to speed on the new rules – making Barclays a centre of excellence for RND clients. We provided online training modules for Barclays internal e-learning system, multiple choice exam questions and face-to-face training.
Barclays Wealth offers private banking services to wealthy clients in over 140 countries and manages the wealth of some of the most successful individuals and families. It has over 300 advisers in this area.
Jonathan Burt, Managing Director, Wealth Advisory of Barclays Wealth said:
"I thought I would write to let you know how appreciative we all are of the support and assistance we received from Burges Salmon in connection with the RND training. We were all very impressed with the diligence and professionalism of your team in enabling us to improve and deliver the training. We know that you invested a considerable amount of time and effort into this project and as you know aim to make sure that business opportunities arise for Barclays and Burges Salmon to work together in the future.
"We also very much appreciated your own expertise in the tax field. I think that you built an excellent rapport especially with us and we all enjoyed working with you. Apart from your focus on the training project, it is also extremely useful to get your informal steer on developing points and also your thoughts on how the bank can incorporate some of the issues in the way we do business."
We have a leading tax and trust team with 40 fee earners. Our lawyers advise individuals, trustees and financial institutions on wealth preservation and tax mitigation. In addition to national and international trust, tax and estate planning, we advise entrepreneurs and other lawyers on personal and business tax, corporate and business structures. We advise on contentious trust and probate issues and deal with tax authority enquiries and disputes.
We have a family team providing advice on marriage separation and divorce, cohabitation, civil partnership, and arrangements for children.
Chambers Guide to the UK Legal Profession 2009 described the team as:
"Already an impressive presence in the local region, this large team of experts is also steadily developing a national reputation in the private client arena. The group houses “some of the best brains in the business,” according to market observers, who also admire the lawyers’ dedication to client care. “They are incredibly approachable and they’re always responsive to our needs,” say sources."