Spring meeting of Asia Chapter on transfer pricing developments attracts 150 tax professionals.

On Monday, April 10, in-house tax professionals gathered in Hong Kong for the Asia Chapter's final meeting of the year. The meeting, which was hosted by KPMG LLP, focused on transfer pricing developments in Asia--the hottest tax issue in Asia. The topical nature of the meeting manifested itself in the audience: more than 150 professionals attended, making the April meeting the largest event the Asia Chapter has held in its short, one-year history.

Following a brief welcome by Chapter President Bill Ramires of Altria, two KPMG partners--Steven Tseng and Masanori Kawanobe--provided an overview of Asian transfer pricing developments. Other topics discussed during the day were the challenges to global transfer pricing compliance by Dave Rutges; transfer pricing risk management by Steve Harris; cost sharing by Clark Chandler; and APA and Competent Authority developments by Clark Chandler, Steve Harris and Steven Tseng.

In the afternoon, participants had the opportunity to attend one of three breakouts sessions: transfer pricing in the financial services industry by Rema Serafi; intellectual property and structuring by Clark Chandler; and transfer pricing challenges in China by Steven Tseng.

The meeting concluded with a panel of TEI members composed of David Beringer of Noble Group Ltd.; Harold Kong of Honeywell; and Peter Sin of Rockwell Automation Asia Pacific Limited. The panel was moderated by David Sutherland Morgan Stanley Dean Witter Asia Limited. The member's panel was one of the most popular sessions of the meeting.

The meeting also featured the annual general meeting of the Asia Chapter were the management team for TEI 2006-2007 were elected.