SF Office Managing Partner Marsha Dungog recruits new counsel to complete team
We are delighted to announce the launch of a new U.S.-Canada practice following a series of hires in California over the past year. The team, based in San Francisco, provides cross-border legal representation and advice to families, entrepreneurs and businesses with Canadian interests. The team is led by the firm’s San Francisco Office Managing Director Marsha Dungog, who most recently recruited her former Andersen Tax colleague Jonathan Garbutt to join as special counsel last month. Marsha, an international tax lawyer with over 20 years of experience in international income and estate tax planning, joined Withers last October 2020.
Jonathan is a Canadian tax lawyer who previously worked with Marsha and associates Jennifer Silvius and David Schow at a cross-border boutique tax firm in Calgary. Prior to that, Jonathan had his own Canadian tax law boutique after starting his career with Baker McKenzie in Toronto.
The new U.S.-Canada team is composed of lawyers who are licensed in both jurisdictions and who have actually lived and worked on both sides of the border. While the core team members are based in San Francisco, the practice draws support from talented tax attorneys across the firm’s U.S. offices. Outside of the U.S., the practice also supports the firm’s offices in Hong Kong, Singapore, Switzerland, and London, among others, in advising multigenerational, high net worth families that have connections to Canada.
“The trend of global mobility was accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic and has led to more and more successful individuals seeking tax and immigration guidance into and out of Canada,” Marsha said. “We have been building our capabilities to serve clients with US-Canadian interests and are thrilled to formalize our U.S.-Canada practice with the arrival of Jonathan and other recent hires.”
Jonathan’s practice shares a strong focus on U.S.-Canadian trust and estates with Marsha’s, who in addition to Canada has grown Withers’ service offerings to international clients in Australia. His practice also includes general tax planning, estates and trusts law, global corporate tax minimization, tax advice for M&A, international private investment and tax controversy and litigation. Jonathan also has experience with international transfer pricing matters.
Jonathan says: “I’m excited to be re-joining Marsha to help launch a new U.S.-Canada practice and be part of Withers’ renowned international trust and estates team. Cross-border work is at the heart of what Withers does, just as it is for my own practice, and I see great opportunities in working across a truly international platform.”
Withers has deep experience helping Canadian clients all over the world, ranging from advising Canadian co-founders of a Silicon Valley company on tax and immigration considerations related to their exit strategy, to advising multigenerational Asian families with Canadian connections on cross-border tax and estate planning.
