The 42 winning deals in the Finance Dublin Deals of the Year Awards 2023 are announced. The deals covering transactions awarded from 239 deal nominations are awarded in six broad categories: M&A, Debt, and Equity Capital Markets, Loans & Financing, and, Financial Services, including Aviation Finance. The issue profiles each of the 42 winning deals, quoting the key players and advisers, and their roles in making each of the deals happen.
The deal involves the financing the Celtic Interconnector, being developed by Ireland's EirGrid and its French counterpart, RTÉ, the first connection between Ireland and Europe's electricity grids. The project is being developed by EirGrid and RTÉ, underpinned by a competitive funding package including a €300m term loan from Danske Bank and a €200 million facility provided by BNP Paribas and Barclays.
Photo: [L-R] Brendan O'Donnell, Danske Bank Director Corporates & Institutions; Alistair Welch, Danske Bank Head of International Units & Country Manager Ireland; Mark Foley, EirGrid Group Chief Executive and Michael Behan, EirGrid Chief Financial Officer.
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This month's Editorial, titled "The history of finance", takes as an example the workings of the BEPS corporation tax regime announced in July by the OECD as a sign of a growing importance of the global regulatory and governance frameworks that Ireland as a small open economy exists and prospers within. There are philosophical debates around the efficacy of this process that lie at the core of our future.....
Details of the 239 Nominations for the 2023 annual Finance Dublin Deals of the Year Awards 2023. The shortlisted deals provide the most comprehensive analysis of the most significant deals across the finance ecosystem in Ireland in 2022.
Also: the state of play in global banking, following the jitters spurred by the collapse of SVB Bank, including fragility risks in certain areas, including the implementation (by the Fed) of money markets regulation; the important EU Sandbox initiative, welcomed by an Irish Central Bank Spokesman in a statement in Finance Dublin.
In the May issue of the Finance Dublin Irish Tax Monitor the Panel comments on the Government's proposed approach to implementing BEPS Pillar Two, including how it could bring heretofore tax exempt activities into the tax net. Other topics on the agenda include BEPS and Aircraft Leasing; Tax Classification of Foreign Entities; VAT in the area of digitalisation, the Land Value Sharing legislative proposals; Ireland's corporate tax take and from a recent ruling by the TAC, the importance of keeping proper books.
Maples' Head of Tax Andrew Quinn writes in the May edition of the Irish Tax Monitor, ahead of the release of details of the new Pillar II 'Top up Tax' ('QDTT'), that Ireland could levy the top-up tax on "under-taxed" entities within the scope of the Directive and not exempted or under a safe harbour in the Directive. "That could mean that Ireland could levy tax in certain limited cases on entities that to date have generally been treated as tax exempt in Ireland under Irish tax legislation, such as an Irish regulated fund", he says.
Angela Fleming, BDO's head of FS Tax, reviews the new Guidance from Irish Revenue on the classification of foreign entities for Irish tax purposes, and notes their decision not to adopt the approach of HMRC in the UK of providing a list of examples of foreign entities and their classifications. The proposed Irish approach will be to look at each foreign entity on its own merits based on established principles set out in case law, and, she notes, potential use of the Irish RTS (Revenue Technical Service) for clarifications.
Writing on the proposed Land Value Sharing Bill, in the May edition of the Irish Tax Monitor, Dominic O'Shaughnessy, Tax Director, Corporate & International Tax, Deloitte says the proposed changes add to the air of uncertainty in the market with the inclusion of existing zoned land likely to be the most contentious change. "While, in principle, there are arguments for a form of LVS contribution, applying LVS to land that is already zoned would not seem equitable, as such lands would have been purchased at a price that did not take into account the impact of the LVS contribution", he says. Read more
here.
The new Minister of State at the Department of Finance Jennifer Carroll MacNeill hitting the ground running with a packed international financial services and 'Ireland for Law' marketing programme. In an interview with the editor, Ken O'Brien, in the Finance Dublin February issue, the minister outlined her ambitions for promoting Ireland as an international financial centre and as a common law legal jurisdiction.
In the 2023 Yearbook edition of the Finance Dublin Funds Monitor the panel reflect on developments in asset management and investment funds in 2022 and what is in store for 2023.
In the April issue of the Finance Dublin Irish Tax Monitor the Roundtable Panel comment on latest developments in the evolution of BEPS rules, digesting new guidance. A key area of interest from an Irish corporate tax perspective is the Qualified Domestic Minimum Top-up Tax while clarification of rules for insurance companies are welcomed.
In the February issue, Panel members Andrew Quinn of Maples & Calder and Tatiana Kelly of Deloitte comment on a significant ruling by the European Court of Justice on a State Aid case involving Luxembourg that looks likely to weaken the Commission's appeal in Ireland's Apple case.
The past year's trends are surveyed in our cover story. It has been a turbulent year, but also in many ways a landmark year. Those landmarks raise hopes about several features of the near term future for Ireland, business, the economy, and the financial services sector, both domestic and international.
The economic backdrop is benign. It indicates that from a growth and pure financial point of view Ireland has totally got it right. In it, we point to "a hugely significant factor, accounting for, in 2022 alone, a decline in the absolute size of the national debt of 790 basis points. This follows a 660 basis point decline in 2021, and 140 in 2020, the peak year of the pandemic". This indicates that a potentially viable and sustainable future lies ahead for the Republic of Ireland - that relatively is more attractive indeed than any other coutry in the continent of Europe as the new year dawns.
Leading edge thinking is evident through the rest of the publication, in our features, and 'This Month' articles, as well as in the December 2022 Irish Tax Monitor, where we reference the benefits of a move towards a territorial tax system, and examine latest developments on the BEPS front, including its implications for the insurance industry.
With the EU overcoming the final hurdles in coming to agreement on how it will implement the OECD's BEPS Pillar 2 rules, the path is now clear for the rules to be transposed across the EU by the end of 2023.
The seventh edition of
Finance Dublin's quarterly
Finance Dublin Funds Monitor is published: Focusing on the increasing opportunities for retail distribution in investment funds, and how technology is changing the playing field.
The panel also examines the key developments in the global funds and asset management industry including the growth of retail investor access to private investment; developments driving changes in distribution; data analytics; trends in product design, ESG, regulation and governance.
