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Alistair Darling calls in City chiefs to avoid tax row exodus
19.05.08
The Chancellor is to bring senior executives from Britain's leading multinationals "into the tent" in a bid to stave off an exodus abroad of major companies over a tax row.
Alistair Darling is expected tomorrow to announce a major climbdown over multinational tax reforms, which have already seen the the drugs group Shire and United Business Media say they will take their headquarters to Ireland to avoid new rules on the taxation of overseas intellectual property rights.
Companies including Sir Martin Sorrell's WPP marketing empire and the pharmaceuticals giants GlaxoSmithKline and AstraZeneca have also hinted they may quit the UK.
Today Darling said he would take advice from an eight-strong group of directors as well as Richard Lambert, head of employers' body the CBI.
The team brings in representatives of companies that might defect, including Julian Heslop of Glaxo and Douglas Flint of HSBC. Anglo-French groups Axa UK and the B&Q and Castorama company Kingfisher are represented, as is Anglo-Dutch giant Unilever. Leading finance directors Byron Grote of BP, Andrew Shilson from Rolls-Royce and BT's Hanif Lalani make up the remainder.
Darling's Treasury officials were briefing over the weekend that the new rules were never meant to be attempts at raising tax. Financial Secretary Jane Kennedy has been charged with smoothing over the affair.
