George Merrylees

George provides strategic advice to internationally mobile clients, focusing on cross-border tax planning, relocation, asset structuring and succession matters.

He has developed two particular areas of focus. The first is providing project leadership to those for whom a family office offering is not yet appropriate, advising and coordinating on issues as diverse as tax, matrimonial agreements, employment, carried interest-related awards and profit extraction. The second is solving and demystifying complex cross-border situations and structures to provide coherent and practical solutions for the benefit of the client and their family.

Over the years, George has built up a network of advisers and partners across many jurisdictions and is able to employ this to the advantage of his clients.

As one of the few UK-based specialists in his field who can advise fluently on complex matters in French, George offers Francophone clients (whether from Europe, Israel, the Americas or Africa) a uniquely integrated, culturally attuned service.

• Structuring complex financial assets, including carried interest and co-investment.
• Analysing the taxation of complex trust and corporate entities, particularly with a view to unwinding the structures.
• Advising on international mobility, such as relocation to and from the UK.
• Drafting and negotiating the tax and indemnity provisions of matrimonial separation agreements over complex assets that required a delayed payment mechanism.
• In succession cases, advising and negotiating on the distribution of international estates.
• Advising on complex civil law usufructs.

• George speaks regularly in Luxembourg, Paris and Geneva on matters of UK tax.

George is the chairman of the Franco-British Society and an alumnus of the Franco-British Young Leader programme for 2018.

He is also a member of The Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners (STEP) and the Franco-British Chamber of Commerce & Industry.