Content area
Full text
A former Allen & Overy partner is setting up his own legal practice in an attempt to help investors recoup withholding tax reclaims from German authorities.
Kai Schaffelhuber, a Frankfurt-based lawyer, says investment and pension funds are shying away from challenging tax officials over money he believes is rightfully theirs.
The legal wranglings will revolve around dividend arbitrage trades, more specifically stock-lending transactions known as ‘Cum-Ex’ trades outlawed by German authorities in 2012.
German officials are still looking the trades prior to the ban to determine if the practices engaged in by banks constituted tax evasion.
To date it has not been clarified whether they were previously legal or illegal.
Last year the European branch of Canada's Maple Bank was forced to file for bankruptcy on account of claims from the German...