David Lee

David has practitioner experience of over 40 years in Singapore and international taxation including Singapore Corporate and Business Income Tax, Withholding Tax, Tax Incentives, Tax Audits, Personal Income Tax, Transfer Pricing, Goods and Services Tax and Stamp Duty. His experience spans both the tax compliance and advisory aspects  of taxation, from the filing of tax returns to the structuring of cross border transactions and entities. He has had extensive involvement with a diverse portfolio of clientele both local and global, and from a broad spectrum of industries that included oil and gas, insurance, fund management, growth funds, private equity funds, shipping, shipbuilding, construction, port, power, telecommunications, manufacturing, hotel, trading, services and investment companies. His clientele included global multinational companies, government-linked enterprises, private enterprises, and publicly listed companies.

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He was a Partner at KPMG Singapore for over 18 years having headed tax projects that included mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures and investments in various countries in the region. Notable mergers included the Temasek Holdings subsidiary groups, Sembcorp Industries Ltd (merger of ST Industrial Corporation and Sembawang Corporation) and Capitaland (merger of Pidemco Land and DBS Land), JTC operating arms (Ascendas Science Parks and Jurong Port) and the spin-off of the M&W Zander Engineering group with the intention of listing in Singapore responsible for the privatization. He was also the global Tax lead partner for the acquisition of 117-year-old Raffles Hotel, along with 40 other hotels and properties worldwide by US- based investment fund Colony Capital LLC for S$1.72 billion (US$1 billion), and appointed as a follow on, as the global tax lead partner for the global merger and restructure of the Raffles, Swissotel and Fairmont chains by Colony Capital. David assisted in initiating the entry of Aberdeen Asset Management and the subsequent collective investments funds into the Singapore funds market in 1992.

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David holds a Bachelor of Accountancy qualification from the  National University of Singapore (1981) and is an Accredited Tax Advisor (Income Tax & GST) in the institute of Singapore Chartered Tax Professionals.