FOUNDING PARTNER

Laurent Cantoni

Expertise

Member of the Paris Bar and founding partner of the firm, Laurent Cantoni advises founders, executives, and families on their most sensitive wealth-related transactions, in France and in cross-border situations. He supports his clients over the long term and works alongside their other advisers (notaries, private bankers and family offices), whether coordinating them or taking his place among them, to ensure a single, coherent approach to the family's wealth.

He is at ease with unsettled tax questions, on which neither established guidelines nor case law yet exist. On such matters, he has built a recognised practice in advance ruling requests (rescrits), which he approaches not as an abstract question put to the authorities for arbitration, but as confirmation of a rigorous legal analysis carried out beforehand. Obtaining the tax authorities' formal position upstream allows legal uncertainty to be turned into security, before the client decides.

This approach draws on experience gained from the client's side of the table (private banking, followed by successive secondments with a foreign industrial group and a major French banking institution). From it, he has retained the instinct to recommend to each client the solution he would choose were it his own situation.

His practice covers:

• Advising founders and company managers, prominent families, private banks and family offices on complex transactions (contribution-and-sale and gift-and-sale arrangements, Dutreil pacts, financing of business real estate, real estate wealth tax (IFI), taxation of life insurance and trusts, etc.).

• Structuring the compensation of employees and executives (management packages, employee share ownership such as BSPCE, free shares and RSUs).

• The international mobility of entrepreneurs, families and executives (inbound and outbound assignments, exit tax).

• Advising non-residents on the structuring of their financial and real estate investments in France.

• A strong practice in tax audits and litigation, both before the tax authorities (tax audits, tax searches) and before the civil and administrative courts.

In the event of a tax audit, he draws on solid experience in negotiating settlements where this serves the client's interest. While respectful of the tax authorities' positions, he does not hesitate to assert his disagreements where they appear legally well-founded. He also favours a secure approach and, where there has been a clear error, the route of voluntary regularisation (repatriation of registered offices to France, bringing complex situations into compliance, etc.).

A lecturer in tax law at the Paris Bar School (École de Formation du Barreau), Laurent Cantoni also leads training sessions for professionals (chartered accountants, auditors, in-house tax specialists, notaries and wealth management advisers).

He is a member of the Institut des Avocats Conseils Fiscaux (IACF) and of the International Fiscal Association (IFA).

Background

Before founding Chatelain Cantoni Avocats in 2019, Laurent Cantoni practised:

• 3 years as a tax lawyer (Signataire / Senior) at CMS Francis Lefebvre Avocats, in Neuilly-sur-Seine.

• 4 years as a tax lawyer (Manager) at PwC Société d'Avocats, in Neuilly-sur-Seine.

• 2 years as a tax lawyer/jurist, in a tax law firm and then within a mid-sized enterprise (ETI).