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KPMG LLP is the accounting and tax firm that understands business, particularly the distinctive needs of market leaders. The firm offers clients a powerful combination of people, products, technologies and results-oriented strategies to help them meet their challenges and improve performance. The fastest growing Big Five firm, KPMG is uniquely positioned to help clients strengthen their position in changing marketplaces. KPMG LLP (www.us.kpmg.com) is the U.S. member firm of KPMG International. KPMG International's member firms have 103,000 professionals, including 6,500 partners, in 152 countries.

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Canadian firm Torys has hired two tax partners and an associate from the defunct Andersen for its New York office. Gary Gartner and Jeffrey Scheine have joined the firm as partners while Pamela Petree has joined as an associate; all join from Andersen's New York office. Gartner was previously the head of Andersen's international tax practice in New York with responsibility for the northeast region of the US and Canada. He focuses on US federal income tax law affecting both foreign and domestic taxpayers with particular experience in US-Canada cross-border work. Scheine was previously in the transaction advisory services (M&A) group at Andersen while Petree had been working as an international tax manager at Andersen for five years.

White & Case, Feddersen has more than quadrupled its tax practice in the Czech Republic by hiring a team of 10 tax advisers from Andersen. The expansion will give White & Case 12 tax professionals in the Czech Republic, making it the largest department within a law firm in the country. Previously the firm had two associates practising tax.

Multinational companies may be able to set up a single, pan-European pension scheme for employees if a European lobby group is successful in its battle to remove tax obstacles. The group backing the move is pan-European pensions group (PEPGO), an association of 20 multinationals including Swiss Life and Kvaerner. Business and information technology consultants AMS Management Systems is making an application to the UK Inland Revenue to place one of its UK employees in its Netherlands company pension scheme. Being unable to establish a single scheme can cost multinationals with employees throughout the EU millions of dollars each year as they are left unable to pool either investments or administrative costs. But on account EU tax legislation is almost impossible to pass because of the unanimity requirement resulting from member states' concerns about losing revenue, the EU pensions directive signed earlier this year does not cover tax issues. AMS, at the suggestion of PEPGO, is therefore trying another tactic.

According to the recent ruling in the Morgan Grenfell case, the UK revenue authorities do not have the power to access legally privileged documents. Mark Kingstone and Dominic Winter, Linklaters, London report on the decision

Mexico's transfer pricing reforms are somewhat vague but could increase the overall tax bruden. By Jorge Narvaez-Hasfura and Eric Torrey, Baker & McKenzie, Mexico City

Three US tax groups are urging the government to recognize the growing need for tax simaplification. The American Bar Association (ABA) tax section, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, and the Tax Executives Institute have praised legislation introduced by the Republican senator Rob Portman as a significant step forward. The legislation includes repealing the alternative minimum tax and simplifying the taxation of capital gains.

The European Commission has declared the US exclusions from protectionist steel measures ?manifestly insufficient'. At the time of going to press the European Commission was due to present its recommendations on short-term countermeasures against the US to the general affairs council on July 19 2002. The short list of punitive tariffs amounts to $380 million and was set to be discussed by the council on July 22 2002. The US steel safeguards introduced in June this year, affected E2.3 billion ($2.1 billion) of EU steel exports. The US exclusions only cover some 333,000 tonnes, which the EU estimates, is only around a tenth of exports. The EU claims that the US safeguards are damaging the US economy by creating artificially high prices as well as affecting foreign exporters. It is also fully expecting the WTO to condemn the measures next year.