This conference takes place at a time of great change in the financial services industry. Banks are under scrutiny and being regulated more than ever before. The financial crisis is creating tensions between tax authorities and investors affecting cross border investment. The EU and OECD are trying to simplify withholding tax across 34 markets. The US is making the most swingeing and far reaching changes to its withholding tax policies. Financial institutions and investors must now cope with tightened QI regulations and by 2013 the new FATCA provisions of the HIRE Act will kick in. As a financial institution or as an investment management professional, if you’re not up the curve on these issues, the penalties and reputational damage of non compliance will be enormous.

The conference is divided into two industry specific days to provide a deeper focus on the issues and how they apply in practice. Day 1 focuses on compliance issues for financial institutions, whilst Day 2 provides information for investors and intermediaries. In total, there will be over 40 expert speakers, 17 topical sessions and 7 interactive panel sessions across the two days to help you get up to speed with these complex issues. Ross McGill will also be running a pre-conference briefing day on 27th September.

To book a place or to find out more about the conference, including the confirmed speakers, please visit the event website.

If you can’t make it to London in person, you can attend this event online at TConsult’s secure Online Conference Space for the event. This allows you to actively participate in the conference remotely, taking advantage of:

• a live video stream from the event
• opportunities to ask questions of the speakers in real time
• space to discuss the issues with other online delegates
• session summaries and recordings to help you catch up on anything you miss
• all of the conference resources, including speakers’ slides, in electronic form

You can access all of these resources direct from your own office. If you think online attendance at this event will be useful for yourself or your colleagues, then please visit tconsult-ltd.com/ustaxconference to find out more and to book your online place now. Online attendance starts from just £594 per delegate per day, if you book before 3rd September.

If you have any questions about online attendance at this event, please contact us.

TConsult was delighted to send our Creative Director, Kirsty Pitkin, to record the event. She produced detailed session summaries for the event blog and conducted video interviews with the speakers to identify the key issues and questions. The conference was split into parallel sessions, so these resources have been extremely valuable to delegates who wish to find out more about the parallel sessions they could not attend, and to those in the wider community who were unable to be in Edinburgh for the event.

It was a fascinating meeting, covering topics ranging from cloud computing through resource discovery and digital preservation to e-Science and open data policies.

To find out more about this event and to see the materials Kirsty Pitkin produced, visit the event blog.

“Ever since I joined the industry in 1996, I have had an almost evangelical passion to make withholding tax a simpler thing for investors to understand and for the industry to implement.  I already sit on the ISO 20022 Securities Evaluation Group and have tried, through my three books on the subject, to try to help everyone understand the complexities involved in the current procedures and treaties.  With many EU markets now being referred to the European Court of Justice on these matters, its clear that withholding tax is firmly in the top quartile of custody issues.  So, I’m honoured to have been asked to join this group and delighted to be able to contribute in however small a way, to helping investors maximise their returns in an efficient way.”

Kirsty will be providing live blogging updates, writing sessions summaries and conducting video interviews with a range of delegates, speakers and sponsors to help amplify the event to a wider, remote audience. These activities will help those who cannot make the conference in person to keep abreast of the topics and engage in the discussions online so they do not miss out on this valuable event. Kirsty explains her plans for the event in more detail in this conference newsflash.

The LIS Research Coalition Conference will take place at the British Library on Monday 28th June 2010. For more information or to book a place, please visit the conference website.

You can follow the conference updates on Twitter by following @LISResearch or the event hash tag #lisrc10. Kirsty’s session summaries and video interviews will appear at the LIS Research blog throughout the event.

If you are one of those panicking about the implications of the current situation for your event, we may have a solution for you…

Our Online Conference Space can be set up at short notice to provide stranded delegates with the opportunity to attend remotely via the internet. Delegates are provided with login details to your own unique conference space, where they can benefit from a live video stream, recordings of completed sessions, session summaries and interactive tools so they can ask questions and network with other remote delegates.

If you are looking for a way to avoid the disappointment and lost revenue associated with cancelling your event, please contact us as soon as possible to discuss how we can keep your event going, despite the travel chaos!

A 2-day intensive course covering the global basics of withholding tax, key operational problems and solutions for intermediaries. The course is led by industry expert, Ross McGill.

Location: Amsterdam Date: 22nd – 23rd June 2010 Cost: £975 per delegate.

If you attend online you will get the same high-quality training via a live video stream and the facilities to ask questions in real time, participate in group discussions and benefit from interactive workshop tasks.

“Withholding Tax is changing at a more rapid pace today than it has ever done before. Changes in the US market, as well as changes in the OECD markets and the European Union mean that the complexity associated with processing withholding tax has never been greater. This course goes into detail not only as to the context of each of these changes, but also the practical implications for custodian banks, brokers, beneficial owners and everyone else in the investment chain, thus ensuring that withholding tax is optimised for clients.”

Ross McGill, Course Presenter

The course will be beneficial for senior departmental heads responsible for deciding strategy and resourcing in corporate actions, including anyone responsible for compliance, risk management, client relationship management, client service strategy, fund or asset management, institutional investment and heads of back office operations. Its objective is to give enough operational and regulatory detail to allow senior managers to understand the options open to them for providing withholding tax services within custodial SLAs and the tools to select the most appropriate solution.

Note: This is NOT a course for withholding tax departmental staff. It is a course designed to give senior management the tools they need to decide and develop strategy.

This is a 2-day intensive course covering US S.1441 NRA regulations and The Tax Extender’s Bill (FATCA), examining the basics, the history, operational compliance and future changes, led by industry expert, Ross McGill.

Location: London

Date: 23rd -24th March 2010

Cost: £975 per delegate.

If you attend online you will get the same high-quality training via a live video stream and the facilities to ask questions in real time, participate in group discussions and benefit from interactive workshop tasks.

“Our US Withholding Tax Course covers what is undeniably the most complex set of withholding tax regulations in the world. Not only have financial institutions got to contend with US S.1441 regulations – the so-called “QI” regulations, but also the FATCA regulations, which now run in parallel to them. The effects on both qualified and non-qualified intermediaries cannot be understated.”

Ross McGill, Course Presenter

The course will be beneficial for anyone responsible for compliance, risk management, client relationship management, client service strategy, fund or asset management, institutional investment and back office operations. We use practical workshops to go through the detail of how to comply and discusses best practices to make sure that beneficial owners are able to obtain the best possible tax rate based on the documentation available.

• US Withholding Tax: Operational & Regulatory Compliance

2 days, £975 per delegate

A 2-day intensive course covering US S.1441 NRA regulations as well as FATCA – The Tax Extender’s Bill. Basics, history, operational compliance and future changes are all covered… Find out more about this course

23/24 March – London
27/28 April – Sydney
16/17 Nov – Copenhagen

• International Withholding Tax Advanced

2 days, £975 per delegate

A 2-day intensive course covering the global basics of withholding tax. The course also addresses key operational problems and solutions for intermediaries… Find out more about this course

22/23 June – The Netherlands
12/13 Oct – London

To find out more about our public training courses or to make a booking, please click here.

We also offer a wide range of training courses on an in-house basis. Browse our complete course catalogue to find out how we can help your business with a range of business edge, regulatory, corporate actions and technology management training courses.

The event involved researchers and practitioners from a wide range of disciplines, who came together to discuss the concept and application of transliteracy, which the working definition defines as: the ability to read, write and interact across a range of platforms, tools and media from signing and orality through handwriting, print, TV, radio and film, to digital social networks. As Kirsty explains in her presentation, reaching a remote audience effectively involves a keen awareness of transliteracy and accessibility if you are to create a suite of resources that allows online delegates to get value from attending online.


We are continuing to develop our online conference spaces so we can offer conference organisers an innovative package to help them reach a wider audience and increase revenue. If you are interested in discussing the ideas raised in this presentation to see how we could help you with your event, please contact us or read more about our event amplification services.