What has 2019 meant to us?

While we are excited about where our plans for 2020 will take us, our team has also reflected on what we have achieved in 2019, and what 2019 has meant to us.

Learning

You might think that with over 50 years’ combined experience of managing cross-border projects, we would know all there is to be known about the legal implementation of international group restructuring projects and intercompany agreements. But of course, learning never stands still – and one of the best ways to learn is to teach. That’s why we wrote a book on intercompany agreements for TP compliance which was published in March 2019, and why in July we launched our online course on the same subject.

Innovation

Yes we know, this is a word that is often thrown around. We’ve just tried to find ways to get better at doing the things we care about. And ‘better’ includes in terms of speed, accuracy, quality and cost. So in September we launched a suite of online document automation tools for intercompany agreements – partly as an internal tool for us, and partly as something which others can use to help more multinational groups have access to best-in-class intercompany agreements. We call this our ‘Fast Track’ ICA drafting service. The tools also facilitate the creation of automated bilingual ICAs (currently English/Chinese), and are specifically designed to be accessible by finance, tax and TP professionals.

Community

A business has no value unless it serves a community. And innovations have no positive impact unless they are actually used. For us, the communities we serve include tax and transfer pricing professionals (both in-house and in private practice), CFOs and FDs, and of course legal teams. One way that we serve our community is by providing free training. Another is simply by listening – for example, during the development of our fast track drafting service, we listened and responded to feedback from dozens of tax, TP and legal professionals across four continents, who helped us understand how we could improve our online tools to make them easier to use.

International footprint

‘International’ has been in our genes since we founded LCN Legal in 2013. It has become even more significant to us as the community of professionals we work alongside has grown. That’s why in September 2019, we sponsored TP Minds Asia in Singapore, and announced the opening of our representative office in Zhengzhou, China, in order to better serve our contacts in the Asia Pacific region.

Giving back

We are committed to giving back and making a positive difference to the wider community, not just tax, transfer pricing and legal professionals. In October, we announced our ‘5 for 1’ pledge for giving books to schools; and made our first delivery of over 180 books to a primary school in China. This pledge is made possible by sales of our ‘Fast Track’ ICA drafting service, online course and toolkit of template intercompany agreements.

Gratitude

We are sincerely grateful to all of our friends and contacts within the tax and transfer pricing community who have recommended or instructed us, whether for the first time or for the twentieth time. Not everyone cares enough to go beyond their own field of expertise, and to make the extra effort to recommend us. Thank you.

Wherever you are, whatever your holiday plans are, we LCN team wish you a very happy holiday season and a great New year full of peace and joy!