Dr. Zhou is a valuation, corporate finance, and accounting expert with more than 15 years of consulting experience.
He specializes in the application of finance, accounting, and taxation principles in a variety of consulting and litigation settings for financial institutions (banking and insurance) and companies in the utility, energy, and pharmaceutical industries. He often advises clients on investment risk analysis and valuation, regulatory policies in the financial industries, bankruptcies, and tax controversies including multinational corporation’s transfer pricing disputes.
Dr. Zhou has served as a consulting expert in several high-profile securities, bankruptcy, and tax litigation matters and has supported academic experts in various stages of the litigation. He primarily focuses on high-stake transfer pricing disputes, the economic analysis of structured finance transactions, and economic substance tests of complex tax transactions. His most recent experience includes leading Brattle’s support of two experts in Nortel’s ongoing bankruptcy allocation and claims proceedings, valuing complex derivatives in a contract termination dispute for Barclays, and providing economics justification for an unsettled tax position on credit derivatives in Ambac’s bankruptcy resolution.
On behalf of the government in Broadwood Investment Fund et al. v. U.S.A., assisted a Brattle and two external experts analyzing the reasonable profitability, net of transaction costs, of the taxpayers’ investment in non-performing loans from China and Korea. The case was dismissed on summary judgment in favor of the government.
Assisted Ambac in its tax dispute with the IRS regarding the taxpayer’s $700 million tax refund during the recent financial crisis. The dispute involved the appropriate taxation of credit derivatives, currently an unsettled area in tax policies and regulation. The case was recently settled.
During the last three years, conducted economic analyses on the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC’s) proposed regulations of the money market funds (floating net asset values, capital requirement, and redemption holdback), a tax-favored dividend repatriation tax proposal, the extension of U.S. wind production tax credit program, and taxes on reinsurance premiums ceded to offshore affiliates.
In Nortel’s bankruptcy allocation and claims proceedings, Dr. Zhou supported an allocation expert and a transfer pricing expert on behalf of Nortel’s UK pension funds. The key issue before the joint U.S. and Canada courts is the allocation of Nortel’s $7.3 billion liquidation proceedings, mostly from patents-related intangible assets, among Nortel’s three primary bankruptcy estates (Canada, U.S., and EMEA). Dr. Zhou led the Brattle team through all phases of the expert reports, deposition, and trial. He also coordinated with UK pension’s actuarial and pension accounting experts on establishing Nortel UK’s claims against the Canadian estate. The allocation decisions were
recently issued in our client’s favor.
Bin is a member of a number of professional associations, including the American Economic Association, the American Finance Association, the Western Finance Association, and the National Association for Business Economics.