Emerging leader: Ralf Thelosen.

• Position: Baker & McKenzie tax lawyer

NAME: Ralf Thelosen

TITLE: Head of Tax

PRIOR COMPANY: Baker & McKenzie

EDUCATION: University of Leiden and University of Groningen (both in the Netherlands): Universitat de Valencia (Spain)

BIRTHPLACE: Boxmeer, the Netherlands

AGE: 38

KEY ACHIEVEMENTS: Thesis submitted by University of Groningen to Dutch Treasury Department to compete for Best Tax Law Thesis of the Year

HOBBIES: Running, cycling, skiing

ONE INTERESTING TIDBIT: Has lived and worked in four different countries (the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, and Singapore)

Being a tax professional has its ups and downs, as anyone reading this article surely knows. But when it comes to managing the highs and lows of corporate tax practice, Ralf Thelosen should be well-prepared.

Having cycled Alpenbrevet in Switzerland, which includes three of the most famous passes in the Alps and approximates 400 vertical meters, the vagaries of corporate practice might seem like a bike ride in the park, so to speak, for Thelosen, who is tax counsel at an international financial firm.

Thelosen started his career at Andersen (in the Netherlands), which at the time was one of the Big Five accounting firms, but has since merged with Deloitte. At Andersen, he became acquainted with tax compliance and the more commercial/consultant side of the tax profession. However, says Thelosen, after a couple of years, he wanted to develop the technical/legal side of the profession, so he joined Baker & McKenzie.

"Although I enjoyed my jobs at the accounting and law firms, enormously I felt something was missing. As a tax consultant you never really see the entire cycle from start to finish of a project, so I moved across from consultancy to the corporate world to find this missing piece of the puzzle. And I am glad I did!" he explains.

Never a Dull Moment

There is no such thing as a typical day at a major financial services company, according to Thelosen. "The last couple of years, a wave of new legislation has been enacted pertaining to financial services and financial service companies, and we haven't seen the end of that yet. The Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), the Common Reporting Standard (CRS), and the changes to the Qualified Intermediary (Ql) regime are of particular importance to the firm and its clients. And then there is, of course, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) project and the European Union (EU) Tax Transparency...