Tax Attorney

Located in the Seattle area, BMGI is the stand-alone private investment office that manages the personal assets of Bill and Melinda Gates as well as the assets of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Trust.  Led by the same Chief Investment Officer for more than 25 years, BMGI’s multi-billion-dollar portfolio has a history of outstanding returns.  BMGI invests globally and across a broad range of asset classes, including public and private equity, fixed income, derivatives, and other marketable securities, as well as real estate, agriculture, and venture capital. While the majority of the portfolio is invested directly, BMGI also makes some commitments to external asset managers that offer additional breadth and expertise.

Along with its core investment team, BMGI also maintains dedicated real estate and agriculture asset management teams, a sophisticated trading desk and operations team, and a high caliber investment services team, all of which contribute to this world class organization.  BMGI employs over 140 professionals who are proud to support the work and growth of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and enable our Principals to focus on and fund their other mission-related work.

Team Description:

Our 18-person legal and regulatory team prioritizes collaboration, creativity, innovation, and the ability to scale our activities to achieve greater efficiency and effectiveness. As well as providing superb legal advice, our legal team focuses on building deep relationships with other BMGI teams to add value to our investment process.

Position Summary:

You will join our legal team as the key legal resource to advise and, in collaboration with our tax team, lead BMGI on tax considerations related to our portfolio. You will work with our tax, legal, investment and operations teams to identify, research, and offer guidance on tax matters related to portfolio holdings, investment opportunities and transactions broadly affecting our portfolio and related sophisticated entity structures, complex financial instruments and international tax law.

Responsibilities:

This position focuses on delivering expertise to deal teams by providing pragmatic and proactive tax guidance across private equity, public equity, venture capital, debt, real estate, and agriculture investments. This includes bringing innovative and thoughtful tax solutions to challenges arising in bespoke transactions and providing thought leadership on tax matters across the breadth of the portfolio. The Tax Attorney will also:

• Actively engage with our trading desk, tax, and operations teams to ensure proper tax treatment of a range of financial instruments, including notional principal contracts, regulated futures contracts, foreign currencies, forwards and similar investments.
• Proactively monitor relevant new legislation and developments impacting our investments.
• Closely partner with investment teams to provide “front-end” strategic and portfolio-wide tax advice, including by conducting in-depth research, offering long-term tax guidance from the perspective of both a taxable and tax-exempt investor, and proactively identifying opportunities to maximize tax efficiency.
• Work with our tax team to establish, implement and monitor policies and procedures to guard against excise tax exposure of investments for private foundations.
• Lead or participate in cross-functional internal projects focused on non-tax matters, dedicated to evolving and improving the legal and regulatory function as a whole.
• Collaborate internally to help BMGI address complex tax and legal issues, identify planning opportunities, and review contracts and other documents.
• Develop an in-depth understanding of our operations and portfolio to deliver cross-functional proficiency across a range of tax topics.
• Deepen and expand relationships with outside tax advisors to ensure access to the highest caliber tax advisors.