T/A economics: Painting a new story…

… as the BeNeLux alternative for transfer pricing and valuation services, yet with a distinct approach.

Atlas and Tiberghien are pleased to announce the launch of T/A economics, a joint venture between Tivalor, a Belgium and Luxembourg based economist boutique (in cooperation with Tiberghien), specialized transfer pricing and valuations, and the Amsterdam based transfer pricing team of Atlas Tax Lawyers.

T/A economics’ credo is to create exponential value for its clients through the sharing of experiences. Combined, the former teams of Tiberghien/Tivalor (business & legal economics) and Atlas (transfer pricing) will be able to offer their clients a distinct, integrated, borderless service approach throughout the BeNeLux, and global interconnectivity through its partnership with Atlas, Tiberghien and the WTS Global network, present in over 100 countries.

 A distinct service approach for people in business

The creation of T/A economics follows closely the genuine belief of its founding partners, Tivalor and Atlas that clients of professional services primarily are people, and those people should be served as being part of a larger ecosystem – i.e. the companies they work for, the shareholders of those companies and more in general the community to which they belong.

“This required us to re-think our value proposition and accordingly our service approach”, Andy Neuteleers of Tivalor explains, “for which I started experimenting in early 2014 when I left the traditional professional services environment as a former Big4 director experiencing a lack of co-entrepreneurship between client and consultant”. This distinct and measurable service approach has been well-received by not only Tivalor’s direct clients, but also by colleagues in the European professional services industry that relied on Tivalor for coaching in growing their own technical, commercial and strategic competencies and capabilities. They both are people in business that had the moxie to decide that experiencing and building their own learning organization is more valuable than receiving mere analytics and compliance focused reports for vertical classification, As a consequence, in its first year, based on a client review, Tivalor was awarded a nomination for the Belgian Transfer Pricing Firm of the Year Award by International Tax Review, and “our ambitions for T/A economics are to be recognized as a contender for the Tier-1 transfer pricing firm.

Our mission for the BeNeLux region

T/A economics’ mission is in fact a prolongation of Tivalor’s mission to inspire businesses and their people, seeking to bring them professional and personal HAPPINESS and COMFORT, creating EXPERIENCES enabling them to STAND OUT. “Yet”, Andy adds, “with the partnering with Atlas’ transfer pricing team we can add EXPONENTIAL VALUE – being higher than the mere summation of the arguments – throughout the BeNeLux region”.

Frank Schwarte (Atlas) echoes the aforementioned by stating that “the distinct and genuine value proposition developed and tested in the BeLux market is something we in the Dutch market can relate to for 100%, as we share similar values within Atlas”. “Also,” Frank adds, “we can still rely on the broad tax-legal expertise of Atlas and Tiberghien in the same manner as before to enable truly integrated offerings where required, yet now in a broader set-up”. Frank further explains the rationale for establishing an integrated BeNeLux service offering, most in particular in the field of transfer pricing: “By combining our specialist transfer pricing competencies and capabilities, and by integrating our teams across the BeNeLux, we are truly convinced that we can scale up T/A economics’ practice to effectively provide for a true alternative for the large, traditional players in the professional services market – in the BeNeLux, but with capabilities beyond those boundaries”.

Specialty expertise and no-nonsense commodity services

“Both Tivalor and Atlas”, Andy continues, “are highly specialized in specific domains of transfer pricing – most notably financial transactions and business restructuring and intangibles valuation – but with combining our forces we should also be able to offer also the more commoditized type of compliance services in an efficient, no-nonsense manner. Doing so, we will nevertheless retain our focus of adding value with the aim of helping our clients to grow with us”. “Clear examples, and in fact how we operate already together (before today as best friends), are those projects we jointly deliver for multinationals with significant operations in both Belgium and the Netherlands. As such, we avoid local review memoranda, but instead provided our clients with just one clear advice suitable for both countries in one go!” Frank explains. “In respect of the Luxembourg market, also we found that our teams, highly specialized in financial transactions, were very complementary”, Andy adds, “and acting as one, genuinely integrated, borderless firm, T/A economics can give independent advice on how and where to best organize a multinational’s intragroup financing and treasury activities”.

Our global reach as WTS Global Partner

Notwithstanding that the majority of foreign investments into the EU enter through the Benelux, transfer pricing work does not at the borders of the BeNeLux. Therefore, T/A economics reinforced its commitment to partner with the WTS Global network, which is headquartered in Munich, but has partners in over 100 countries. “Not only do we act as the local representatives for dealing with queries coming out from the network”, Andy explains, “we also are putting our shoulders under this unique project for strengthening WTS’ global transfer pricing proposition in the coming years by sharing our experiences and taking up responsibilities also on a global scale”. Frank adds that “as it is of key importance to us to be able to rely on a global network of high-quality transfer pricing specialists, we see in WTS Global a trustworthy partner with a tremendous potential to be further developed whereas we share the same vision of being recognized as THE alternative”.  

T/A economics shares knowledge and facilities with Atlas and Tiberghien, tax lawyers, and accordingly has presence in Amsterdam, Antwerp, Brussels, Ghent (coming soon), Luxembourg and Zurich (coming soon).

Looking for talented entrepreneurs

In view of our growth ambitions we are eagerly looking to speak to entrepreneurial professionals that believe in our distinct value proposition, are interested in jointly building our firm by having the ability to take up own responsibilities at an earlier stage in their career than traditionally would be the case, and have experience in transfer pricing and/or valuations to serve our clients and bring them exponential value.

Further details

We gladly refer to our website www.TAeconomics.com for further detailed information.

For further queries or interviews, please contact:

• Andy Neuteleers | Partner | +32 471 892 316 | andy@TAeconomics.com

• Frank Schwarte | Partner | +31 6  31 688 622 | frank@TAeconomics.com