International Tax Review: EUROPEAN TAX AWARDS 2013 – Winners and shortlists

Rosneft, the Russian energy company, was named as European in-house team of the year for direct tax at International Tax Review’s European Tax Awards last week.

Deloitte won the awards for European tax and transfer pricing firm of the year and was the most successful organisation at the dinner at the Dorchester hotel in London. It won 20 of the 73 that were presented.

The big-four professional services firm was only one of the leading firms of tax advisers and lawyers that were represented at the annual awards ceremony, which was taking place for the ninth time.
The bulk of the awards were for the tax and transfer pricing firms of the year in 26 European jurisdictions and South Africa. Twenty one pan-European awards covering other practice areas such as tax disputes and indirect tax, and industries such as energy, financial services, and media and entertainment were also presented.

Ernst & Young won 11 awards, doubling up for tax and transfer pricing in Ukraine and also being named as European tax compliance and reporting firm of the year and the award for European tax policy.

Other winners included Taxand, which won five awards, European indirect firm of the year among them; PwC, which won the transfer pricing awards in Belgium, Russia and Switzerland and KPMG, which was named as tax firm of the year in Finland and Russia.

Law firm winners included the Best Friends Tax Network, DLA Piper, Freshfields Bruckhaus & Deringer, Latham & Watkins and Simmons & Simmons.

Methodology

In addition to the in-house categories, national awards were also presented for tax and transfer pricing to firms in these 27 jurisdictions or regions:

Austria, Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania), Belgium, Central and Eastern Europe (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Romania, Slovenia and Slovak Republic), Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, UK and Ukraine.

Firms made submissions for work done between January 1 2012 and December 31 2012.
The awards were judged according to:
• Size (Not conclusive, though it does indicate what a tax team is capable of taking on)
• Innovation (Did the advice the firm gave show something more than the straightforward answer that is commonly used?)
• Complexity (Did the matter address tax issues that were out of the ordinary and what ingenuity did the firm show to solve them?)

Winners in bold