Biggart Baillie Solicitors

Ronnie Brown

Partner, Glasgow

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Ronnie joined Biggart Baillie in 2003 as Corporate Tax Partner.  His practice covers a wide spectrum of corporate tax including VAT and Stamp Duty Land Tax.  He specialises in tax efficient structuring of corporate finance transactions (including mergers and acquisitions and venture capital investments) and commercial property sales and acquisitions.  He also advises clients upon tax efficient forms of share inventive schemes for officers and employees.

He is highly experienced and acts for a variety of quoted and unquoted companies together with local authorities and other public bodies.  Recently he has:

· advised many High Street retailers on SDLT issues as they apply to Scottish property law including Marks & Spencer, Debenhams, Next and Arcadia

· overseen significant property transactions for Multiplex, Apex Hotels and Travis Perkins using offshore Property Unit Trust structures to achieve significant SDLT savings

· advised Caledonian MacBrayne Ferries on the VAT and SDLT issues arising from the separation of their business interests for Compulsory Competitive Tendering

· assisted a major private Scottish property company on the tax efficient structure of a €300m pan-European property joint venture.

Ronnie is active on a number of tax committees, including the Tax Law Committee of The Law Society of Scotland and is the Convenor of its Business and Property Tax Sub-Committee.  He has represented the Society for a number of years at the Land and Property Liason Group meetings held between HMRC (formerly Customs) and practitioners. He also serves on the Society's Working Party tackling the problems arising from the introduction of SDLT.  He is also a member of the Scottish chapter of the VAT Practioners Group.