Tax Partner elected at PwC Prague to lead M&A

On 1 July, 2007, Viera Kucerova was appointed a partner in the Tax and Legal Services department of the Prague office of PricewaterhouseCoopers. Apart from working for Czech clients, she will be responsible for coordinating Private Equity Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A) tax transactions within Central & Eastern Europe (CEE).

Viera is leading a team of Prague-based M&A tax professionals who support CEE regional offices when advising financial and strategic buyers on deals in their respective territory. She is responsible for managing the tax element of private-equity deals in the region, especially in relation to the tax due diligence and tax structuring part of client support.

“Our clients expect the tax advisor to not only provide tax advice, but to understand the process. The advisor must also be able to deal with the banks, the vendors, and target management, and support them during the whole transaction while keeping an eye on the personal tax position of their partners,” explains Viera.

“We thus provide thorough project management that focuses on assembling and processing the tax advice from all relevant jurisdictions: the fund’s source country, the fund’s home country, the holding company’s location, the target’s location, and any other countries that may be relevant to maximising the tax benefits of the proposed structure.”

Over the last year, Viera’s team has been involved in a number of private equity transactions varying in type and size in the Czech Republic and CEE region.

Viera joined PwC in 1994 and has been working with PwC in Prague since September 2005. Before that, Viera had spent four years as Senior Tax Manager on secondment to the PwC London office.

Viera graduated from the Bratislava’s University of Economics. She is a Slovak Registered Tax Advisor and Fellow of the UK Association of Chartered Certified Accountants. She is fluent in Slovak, Czech, English, French, and Russian.