Link to the story at the faculty page of Thomas Jefferson School of Law

Following on his lunch time CLE presentation for the San Diego County Bar Association with Procopio tax partner Patrick Martin, Associate Dean William Byrnes was invited in April to Zurich, Switzerland to deliver a week-long series of workshops on the implications of FATCA for large financial institutions on the LATAM market.  The series of lectures and workshops began with a breakfast conference of the Latin American Chamber of Commerce in Switzerland, and continued through the week with banking workshops for HSBC, UBS, Credit Suisse, Julius Baer, Hinduja Bank, among others.

Professor William Byrnes’ workshop series was sponsored by Amicorp, a global company service provider, via an invitation by Thomas Jefferson international tax alumni and Swiss office managing director, Geralda Buckley.

William Byrnes stated, “I was intrigued to engage with the banks’ FATCA compliance teams in an open discussion format. The rush of back and forth Q&A and thinking on my feet felt like sixteen years ago when I was a Senior Manager with Coopers & Lybrand leading in-house workshops.  Very complex issues but I’ve since been invited for other workshops so must have been well received.”

He continued, “But the best part of this lecture series was that I shared the floor with an international tax program alumni, and former federal IRS prosecutor, Robert Payne.  It’s wonderful to see the positive impact that the international tax program has played in an alumni’s career.”

“After the workshops, I fielded questions from participants about Thomas Jefferson School of Law’s distance learning pedagogical leadership via video conference specific to a bank’s tax department.”  William Byrnes said “I will continue to introduce Thomas Jefferson to a wider financial community via my alumni outreach, publications and subscribers, and invited lectures with the hope that embedded externships for the current JD and Master students may be established over the coming years.”

Conference information is available at:

San Diego County Bar https://www.sdcba.org/index.cfm?pg=events&evAction=showDetail&eid=11009&evSubAction=listAll

LATCAM http://www.puntolatino.ch/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6240%3A160413-seminar-the-foreign-tay-compliance-act-fatca&catid=345%3Acamara-latinoamericana-de-comercio-en-suiza&Itemid=487&lang=de