Waselius & Wist represented Pandox, one of Europe’s leading hotel property companies, in the sale of hotel property Scandic Luosto to North Europe Tours Oy.
For more information, please contact Mr. Niklas Thibblin.
Waselius & Wist represented Pandox, one of Europe’s leading hotel property companies, in the sale of hotel property Scandic Luosto to North Europe Tours Oy.
For more information, please contact Mr. Niklas Thibblin.
Waselius & Wist represents one of the world’s largest companies in personal care products in the Finnish aspects of its intended acquisition of the European wide business of its competitor.
Value: in excess of EUR 1 billion
For more information, please contact Mr. Jan Waselius or Ms. Lotta Pohjanpalo.
As a consequence of the economic downtrend, financiers have more often been forced to take over a debtor company in order to secure their interests under a facility agreement. The tax treatment of any potential credit losses following such takeovers has raised some concerns, as the Finnish Business Income Tax Act includes a general provision according to which credit losses relating to loans/facilities given to a company where the lender owns more than 10% of shares are not tax-deductible.
The Supreme Administrative Court has, however, very recently rendered a decision (KHO 10.1.2012/6), according to which credit losses that relate to loans/facilities given to a company prior to the financer (a bank) acquiring 10% (or more) of the equity/shares in the debtor company remain tax-deductible. The Court reasoned that such loans/facilities do not differ from financing given by the bank to companies where the bank has no ownership and a forced takeover scenario should generally not lead to the bank ending up in a worse off position from a tax point of view. Accordingly, it is expected that this decision will facilitate future enforcement of security interests.
For further information, please contact Mr. Niklas Thibblin.
As of 1 January 2012, the corporate income tax rate in Finland was reduced from 26% to 24.5%. This is a welcome change, a permanent saving for companies of all sizes.
At the same time, the tax rate for capital income (including capital gains) was increased from 28% to 30%. In addition, for capital income exceeding 50,000 EUR, the applicable tax rate is 32%.
Further, the maximum amount of dividends that can be distributed tax-exempt to a private individual from a non-listed company was reduced from 90,000 EUR to 60,000 EUR.
For further information, please contact Mr. Niklas Thibblin.
published in Getting the Deal Through - Restructuring & Insolvency 2012
Authors: Mr. Lauri Peltola and Mr. Timo Lehtimäki
published by Law Business Research
Authors: Mr. Lauri Peltola and Mr. Tomi Teinilä