An Interview With Superman

This is a story about someone called Brian Sturtz, to whom I will always be very grateful. Brian sadly passed away suddenly in August 2015, and was the former Director of International Tax and Transfer Pricing at Walmart.

Brian was the first person to provide an interview for our website www.lcnlegal.com. That was in early 2014, at a time when LCN Legal was less than a year old, and very few people had heard of us. I don’t know how many tax directors and other professionals we approached before Brian, but it must have been in the dozens. Following Brian’s lead, we have since featured interviews with senior tax and property professionals from well known organisations such as HSBC, American Express and Next.

Brian was also instrumental in the development of our template intercompany agreements for transfer pricing, and helped us to develop them in their current form. I first met Brian at a ‘TP Minds’ conference in London, and we got talking. One of Brian’s pet hates was long, complicated agreements which were impossible to read … and lawyers who seemed to “charge by the word”. Through working with Brian, we were able to simplify our templates in a much more radical way – an approach we have continued to extend and develop, both for transfer pricing agreements and for property investment structures.

In his interview, as well as commenting on his likes and dislikes when dealing with tax administrations, Brian answered the question “which actor should play you in a movie of your life story?” His response was Christopher Reeve, the actor best known for his portrayal of the DC Comics character ‘Superman’ in the 1978 movie of the same name. You can read Brian’s full interview here.

Not-so-coincidentally, we have chosen a ‘superheroes’ theme for the November edition of our ‘international corporate structures’ newsletter. You can download the PDF version here.

If you, or someone you know, needs help to set up a property joint venture, investment club or corporate structure, and you would like to benefit from the unique approach which Brian Sturtz helped us to develop, you can email us at info@lcnlegal.com and we will be delighted to help.