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US-based communications group AT&T is to acquire Vanguard Cellular, a US mobile phone operator. The deal is worth $1.5 billion in cash, and stocks, and $600 million of debt. The acquisition is due to be completed in the first quarter of 1999.

The Finnish govenment has sold its 21.9% stake in Sonera, the country’s leading telecommunications company in the largest-ever offering by a Finnish issuer. The deal is valued at over $1.4 billion. The offering comprised 160 million shares, including 119 million American depository shares sold to institutional investors outside Finland.

US petroleum companies Exxon and Mobil are to merge in a transaction worth $79 billion. Exxon will gain control of the new company. This is the largest merger in US history. The new company will have a market value of $250 billion.

Mason Gaffney, Professor of Economics, University of California argues that the OECD’s definition of harmful tax competition must be challenged. Instead, he suggests that tax competition is both a natural and beneficial process

Competition for holding company business will intensify with the proposal for a new Danish structure. The regime offers multinationals significant benefits and, as Ned Shelton of Sheltons, Copenhagen, explains could win Denmark business from more established jurisdictions

Spain to aid recession-hit companies, UK will be a lower-taxed port in a storm, Malaysian budget promises tax changes, Evasion spreads in Russia as harsher laws are ignored, Brazil’s austerity plan increases tax burden, Cayman Islands will not cooperate on tax crime, Pakistan’s economy rests on tax collectors’ shoulders France’s tax breaks will fight the millennium bug, Tax cuts may lift Peru’s gloom

The Shanghai Finance Bureau and the Shanghai Local Tax Bureau have created a tax refund programme for residential property buyers in Shanghai.

The UK Inland Revenue has published a consultative document on a general anti-avoidance rule (GAAR), which will apply to companies and direct taxes only.

In a ruling dated June 30 1997 (Saint-Gobain – IStR 1997, 557, with commentary by Dr Martin Lausterer), the Cologne Tax Court requested the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to decide whether various types of tax discrimination against the German permanent establishment of a foreign corporation resident in the EU are permitted under Article 52 of the EU Treaty (freedom of establishment).

A Netherlands individual moved from the Netherlands to the UK in April 1984. In the UK he had the status of a non-domiciled resident. He had a so-called substantial interest in a BV resident in the Netherlands. Under Netherlands domestic law, a capital gain on the sale of substantial interest is subject to individual income tax. As of January 1 1997 the substantial interest tax amounts to 25%. Prior to that date, the tax rate was 20%. It is to be expected that as of January 1 2001, the rate will be increased to 30%.