The strict observance to all rules of law is a necessary prerequisite to the financial success of any business.

Unfortunately, the business world is not only faced with an ever increasing self created competition in its own field of activities; an increasing number of business people seem to replace the genuine competition of products and services by competing, with the assistance of highly specialised and equally well paid lawyers, in the exploitation, and even breaking of the laws and rules governing such competition. At the same time legislators in all jurisdictions hasten to close loopholes in the law, be it civil law, company law, tax law or accounting rules.

Such a multitude of constraints requires the very careful choice of legal advisers to get optimum results. Usually, the first choice of a foreign investor is the local office of one the big international law or accounting "factories" the sheer size of which seems to promise a thoroughbred specialist for even the most far fetched problem. Unfortunately the increasing number of actions for damages only illustrates the fact that you just cannot be sure that your company is being advised by one of the highly competent advisers and not by a third or fourth class member of staff.

Time and again I have discovered that the deeper the specialisation, the more likely is the loss of self criticism and the unwillingness to look at the consequences of his or her advice in other fields of law he or she is not so familiar with: thus, wonderful and complicated Articles of Association prepared by a lawyer have been presented to me their only fault being that the company was bankrupt right from its establishment because the lawyer had not respected the rules governing the shareholders' contributions in kind; similarly, turnover - and profits - had been accounted for from services which had not yet been fully executed in accordance with the terms of the contract.

Thus, when I was first faced with accounting and tax rules during my job as legal adviser to the Moroccan Government, I decided to further my legal knowledge by studying the tax and accounting laws required for admission to the chambers of tax consultants and chartered accountants.

I leave all questions of foreign civil and tax laws to a number of personally selected consultants with whom I have worked for a number of years. I take responsibility for the overall control and harmonisation with German rules - especially in international tax savings schemes.

At the same time, being a professor of law at the University of applied science in Duesseldorf makes me completely independent and free of pressures of any kind; the absence of expensive prestige offices and staff provides for rather more competitive fees and enables me to concentrate on finding more sophisticated solutions to your problem.

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