Speaker Bios:  (back to Event Summary)

Catherine has 25 years’ experience of advising on transfer pricing matters both in industry and in practice. She has been Head of Transfer Pricing at AstraZeneca since September 2017 where she has global responsibility for all aspects of AstraZeneca’s transfer pricing matters including planning, managing and defending their transfer pricing arrangements. Prior to this, Catherine was Head of Transfer Pricing for the RELX group for 10 years where she managed a multinational team and led negotiations with tax authorities on transfer pricing matters including APAs. Catherine is a Chartered Accountant and Chartered Tax Advisor and has a Masters degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) from Oxford University.

Dalton Hirata (LL.M International cum laude - ITC Leiden 2017) has about 15 years of experience as a tax lawyer and currently heads the Corporate Tax department of RHI Magnesita. His experience includes consultancy as a tax advisor at Baker McKenzie and in-house roles, mainly dealing with complex topics in International Tax Law.

Wilbert studied economics in Rotterdam at Erasmus University. He then worked for nine years as a Tax Inspector Corporate Income Tax at the Tax Authorities, followed by a job as a political advisor at the Ministry of Financial Affairs, before returning to the tax authorities in various management positions. In 2005, Wilbert started at Shell in The Hague. He lives there too.

Lex is Head of Tax for Shell’s global treasury and captive insurance operations. As Tax Technology Lead, he is responsible for Shell’s tax technology strategy. He has over 25 years experience in the international tax domain. At Shell, Lex responsibilities have included the migration of corporate income tax to Shell’s Business Operations (SBO). Lex led the teams in Chennai, India and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia responsible for the direct tax compliance activities for the Shell companies in more than 30 countries. When he returned to The Hague in 2014, he took on the role of revenue transparency manager, shaping Shell’s tax transparency agenda (including BEPS CbCR, ICAP, B-Team Responsible Tax Principles, Tax Contribution Report and EU public CbCR). In recent years, Lex led the complex international tax structuring work for holdings, treasury and insurance.

Joe is Senior Director with responsibility for Medtronic’s Tax Department Transformation and Technology initiative, using solutions such as RPA, AI/Machine Learning, SharePoint, PowerBI and Alteryx to help improve efficiency and effectiveness. Prior to this, Joe led VAT for Medtronic globally. Over the course of his career, Joe has worked in senior Finance and Tax roles for a number of MNCs including GE Capital, Hewlett Packard, Avery Dennison and Tyro in addition to working in Tax advisory role with PricewaterhouseCoopers. Joe holds various Tax and Accounting qualifications and a MBA from University College Dublin’s Smurfit School of Business.

Kristina (LLM, trained at the bench) has gained experience from all three sides of the tax table during her 20 year long career: she was Senior Tax Manager at EY Finland before holding the position as Group Manager and Delegated Competent Authority at the transfer pricing function of the Finnish Large Taxpayer’s Office and eventually landing at the Wärtsilä Group as in-house, currently holding the position as Head of Transfer Pricing of the Wärtsilä Group.

Daniel joined Falck in 2021 and is leading the Global Tax department, with the aim of forming a forward-thinking and technology driven tax function. He has over 10 years’ of experience working with indirect taxes. Prior to joining Falck, Daniel worked as an indirect tax advisor and SAP tax architect at Deloitte Sweden. He has also worked as a VAT specialist in Vestas and the Swedish Tax Authorities.

Reijo is heading Fortum’s tax team. He focuses mostly on strategic planning, tax policies, tax governance and tax transparency. He supports and gets support from B Team and European Business Tax Forum (EBTF).

Sami Koskinen has worked in international corporate taxation and transfer pricing for over 20 years, both in private and public sectors. Previously, he was a appointed as a fiscal counsellor for the Permanent Representation of Finland to the European Union in Brussels. He is currently employed by the Finnish Tax Administration as a director on stakeholder relations. He also serves as a competent authority on transfer pricing.

Before taking his current position as Head of Group Tax & Transfer Pricing, Erik was working as Country Manager for H&M in The Netherlands. In 2007 The H&M Group applied its first up-to-date Transfer Pricing model, Erik’s role was to introduce the model and made him a ‘TP story teller’ where his experience as a country manager was leveraged to create the right understanding in all the jurisdictions The H&M Group was back then having operations. His move from a commercial position in a country to the current central position has everything to do with the view central management has on the responsibilities and performances within the area of TP and taxation. The latter function is merely seen as a part of the total public affairs and CSR of The H&M Group. The H&M Group embraces a pro-active attitude in the field of TP and as a result Erik holds a wide experience in all procedures available to avoid disputes going public.

Rezan Ökten is a partner and head of Transfer Pricing at Dentons' Amsterdam office. He advises clients on business restructurings, intellectual property, headquarters cost allocation models, financial transactions and valuations, as well as assisting in dispute management and resolution. His deep and significant experience includes advance pricing agreements, tax audits, mutual agreement procedures and court proceedings.

Starting his career at a Big Four firm, Rezan went on to head the transfer pricing practice of an Amsterdam law firm. His experience also includes working as a global in-house transfer pricing specialist of leading telecommunications and technology companies. His exceptional blend of knowledge and experience, gained on both sides of the table, allows Rezan to provide a 360-degree perspective. This is at the heart of how he advises clients. With a clear vision and technically sound approach, he knows when to go the extra mile or be pragmatic to get the buy-in from stakeholders.

Ruben van Aarle graduated as a tax lawyer from the University of Tilburg. He started his professional career as a tax lawyer at Arthur Andersen, the Dutch business of which merged into Deloitte in 2002. At Deloitte, Ruben worked as a member of the corporate & international tax law practice group until mid-2005, at which time he co-founded Taxperience.

In 2017 Ruben co-founded KEEYNS a Tax Technology SAAS company which is now actively entering the corporate en medium seized international market assisting companies and corporates working in multiple countries to get a grip on their tax processes, while providing instant and up-to-date insight via dashboards to its stakeholders.

In 2017 Ruben became shareholder of BCS, a Payroll and HRM SAAS company, providing a full service HRM and payroll concept for its clients, which company was sold in April 2022.

Marta Pankiv is an international tax and transfer pricing professional with over 18 years of practical experience on a managerial level in-house and in various jurisdictions at PwC and Swiss multinational groups. She currently leads the global tax function at Tricentis, a tech company with dual headquarters in the USA and Austria; reporting to the group CFO. In her role she focuses on transfer pricing, M&A taxation, tax risk management in Europe, NORAM and APAC regions. Marta is a Guest Lecturer at EPTP - Executive Program in Transfer Pricing at HEC Lausanne, Switzerland and a Member of the Austrian branch of IFA. She publishes in professional tax journals, including the International Transfer Pricing Journal, Florida Tax Review and BNA Bloomberg. Marta is also a regular speaker at tax and finance conferences in London, Amsterdam, Baltimore, Tokyo. Her book was cited in the 2018 Tax Court of Canada decision on transfer pricing: https://www.ibfd.org/IBFD-Products/Contemporary-Application-Arm-s-Length-Principle-Transfer-Pricing. She holds a PhD in International Business Taxation from the Vienna University (WU) and LL.M. in International Tax Law (WU).

Originally, Lennart is an International Tax Manager specialised in Dutch and international taxation. Lennart gained consulting experience at Big 4 (Deloitte, PwC) and in-house experience at IKEA. In 2015, Lennart founded TP Tuned with a mission to make transfer pricing documentation easier for multinationals. TP Tuned provides global transfer pricing services and software. TP Tuned has developed the leading transfer pricing documentation solution, Reptune, which is used by multinationals to automate their global transfer pricing documentation.

As a Tax Risk Broker, Kuba is responsible for Howden’s tax insurance offering in the Netherlands and CEE region. He has more than 10 years of experience as a Dutch qualified tax lawyer. Before joining Howden M&A in January 2021, Kuba worked at Baker McKenzie and Taxand, both in Amsterdam. Kuba holds an LL.B. and LL.M. in tax law from Utrecht University and an LL.M. in international taxation from the University of Florida.

Remco is currently responsible for running globally the Tax Operations within Blue dot. Blue dot is offering different AI driven Tax and audit solutions running on their online platform. The most known is the VATBox VAT recovery Solution, but Blue dot also offers solutions to analyse data for Employee Benefits (wage tax), Corporate Income Tax and Policy Audit on Employee expenses.

Before joining Blue dot, Remco worked as the EMEA VAT lead at PPG Industries and before that worked as a tax lawyer at Baker & McKenzie.  Remco is registered as a certified tax advisor in the Netherlands.

Tom is Co-Head of Tax at Acquinex and leads the tax team in Europe. He is a UK qualified tax lawyer. He is responsible for risk selection on standalone tax matters and overall supervision of tax input into W&I policies for transactional risks. Prior to joining Acquinex, Tom has worked at HM Treasury/HM Revenue & Customs on international indirect and direct tax policy issues, as well as a tax lawyer at Osborne Clarke LLP, King & Spalding International LLP and Deloitte on cross-border transactions and standalone tax advisory matters in a range of sectors. He is currently a member of the OECD’s technical advisory group on global consumption taxes and has worked closely with tax authorities throughout the world in that role.

Ivan embarked on his voyage through the vast sea of international taxation nearly two decades ago, journeying through various advisory firms across multiple jurisdictions. Since 2017, he has been part of DHL's Transfer Pricing Team, progressively immersing himself in the currents of digitalization. He now eagerly anticipates engaging in insightful discussions with you about navigating these thrilling times where the boundaries between tax and data science are slowly dissolving.

Andrea was born in Czech Republic. She studied University of Economics in Prague and Postgraduate of International Tax Law in Vienna, Austria. During her studies she joined Horwath TPA and worked in Czech, Slovakia and Austria with main responsibility in M&A and international tax advisory. In 2005 she was posted to Shanghai (still with Horwath) as the Head of Representative Office. In 2008 she joined Deloitte and moved to HCMC, Vietnam as Tax Director where she took over responsibility for transfer pricing topics. In 2011 she returned to Vienna to work for Deloitte, during which time she was seconded for 3 months to Brussels to further develop her skills in TP of financial transactions. In 2014 Andrea left consulting industry and joined Erste Group where she assumed different roles including Head of Group cost controlling, project controlling and transfer pricing. Since January 2022 Andrea works in Raiffeisenbank Group as Tax Manager.

Lisa is a Senior Tax Expert at OMV where she is leading OMV’s Pillar II implementation and will present some interesting takes and insights on the project.

She previously was a Senior Associate at PwC, and has pursued Doctorate studies at the Vienna University’s Institute for Austrian and International Tax Law.

Karine has been an in-house tax practitioner for more than 25 years, advising multinationals in all areas of international taxation. She has most recently joined Booking.com as their Head of Tax. She is also a frequent speaker at international conferences and a former lecturer to master students at the University of Paris-Dauphine. She currently lives in the Netherlands

My passions are tax and teaching. I love reading and understanding treaties, laws and directives; seeing how they are shaped in case law and then explaining all that in clear, simple terms with references to real life practical examples. I also work as an interim in-house tax specialist during several months of the year. Assignments differ, but are usually focussed on transfer pricing, sometimes in connection with tax audits.

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