Bill Bies is engaged in a general corporate taxation law practice. His practice has concentrated on domestic and international mergers and acquisitions work, corporate finance and reorganizations. He has been extensively involved in advising both non-residents who wish to do business in Canada and Canadian companies which wish to do business abroad.
Bill has been named by both the English legal directory Chambers Global-The Guide to the World's Leading Lawyers and by the Lexpert/American Lawyer Media Guide to the Leading 500 Lawyers in Canada as one of the leading Canadian practitioners in the area of corporate taxation. He has also been recognized by Best Lawyers in Canada for Tax Law, and by lawday.ca as one of the leading 79 Tax Lawyers in Canada for 2009.
Bill has acted for such clients as E. I. du Pont, ESPN, Anglo-American, Rio Algom Limited, DeBeers Canada, Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation, Cedar Fair, Credit Suisse, The Bank of Nova Scotia, Colgate-Palmolive, InfoSpace, Inc., MDS Inc., Rogers Communications Inc., Dofasco, St. Lawrence Cement, Canadian Pacific Railway, Via Rail and Walt Disney.
He was a Special Lecturer at the Faculty of Law at the University of Toronto from 1979 to 2004, where he taught corporate income tax and international tax. Bill has also taught the corporate income tax course in the Graduate Law Program (LLM) at Osgoode Hall Law School of York University.
He frequently speaks at conferences and seminars. His most recent papers were on the topics of international transfer pricing, interest deductibility and financing costs and the tax treatment of hybrid instruments.
Bill joined the firm as an associate in 1976 and became a partner in 1982. He was most recently vice-chair of the Toronto office's Business Law section and has been the director of the Tax Practice Group.
Membership/Affiliations
- Member, Canadian Bar Association
- Member, Canadian Tax Foundation
- Member, International Bar Association
- Member, International Fiscal Association
- Member, Canadian Petroleum Tax Association
- Member, CBA/CICA Joint Committee on Taxation (Past)
- Special Lecturer, Graduate Law Program, Osgoode Hall Law School, Toronto (Past)
- Special Lecturer, Faculty of Law, University of Toronto, Toronto (1979-2004)
- Assistant Professor, Faculty of Law, Laval University, Québec City (1972-1974)