Overview of corporate tax work over last year;

Types of corporate tax work

M&A

Swiss corporate tax work in 2016 focused primarily on M&A transactions, both in the private and public sector, as well as on reorganisations. The last few weeks of the year 2016 and the early beginning of the year 2017 especially demonstrated the importance of the area, with key transactions such as Lonza's acquisition of Capsugel or Johnson & Johnson's acquisition of the Swiss biopharmaceutical company Actelion.

Tax litigation

During the past year, another major part of tax work related to litigation concerned the refund of Swiss Withholding Tax (dividend-stripping cases).

IPOs

In the period under review, three companies (Investis Holding SA, KTM Industries AG and Varia US Properties AG) were listed on the Swiss stock exchange. With a placement volume of CHF 163m and an implied total market capitalisation of CHF 734m, Investis Holding SA, a leading residential property company in the Lake Geneva region and a national real estate service provider, was the largest among the three. Further, the pharmaceutical company Galenica (future name Vifor Pharma) announced the IPO of a part of its business (Galenica Sante) in March 2017.

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