Personal Profiles

David Fennell
Director Tax Knowledge Services

What are your main responsibilities?
I’m a Tax Director in charge of Ernst &Young's Tax Knowledge and Communications Group which has responsibility for sourcing, analysing and disseminating news of tax developments and their implications to other professional staff and clients of the firm.

What is the most interesting thing about your job?
Given the pace of change and the ongoing challenge to be up to speed with tax developments it feels like a new job every day. The work I do is rarely routine.

What most prepared you for your current role?
I think 17 years in Ernst & Young has allowed me to become so familiar with its people and its technology that in truth the role has more or less evolved around me over a long period of time.

What is the current most interesting thing happening in your field?
I find the influence of European Court of Justice decisions on tax systems of Member States fascinating. From talking to my colleagues in other European countries it is clear that Member States are not doing enough to ‘EU-proof’ their legislation and that taxpayers will continue to win victories in the European courts for some time to come.

What was your best subject in school?
Maths.

What's your favourite saying/quotation?
‘If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants’ (Isaac Newton 1959)I’ve always thought this particularly apt in the tax field

How long go you spend commuting each day?
60-80 minutes in each direction via every rat run known to man.

Favourite form of relaxation?
Relaxing in the Jacuzzi with a glass of Chablis (after the kids have gone to bed).

What is the best book you have ever read?
The Lord of the Rings.

What's your favourite film?
The Shawshank Redemption.

What's your favourite sporting moment?
The last two minutes of the 1999 UEFA Champions League Final when Manchester United completed the last leg of their treble thanks to two late goals against Bayern Munich (closely followed by the subsequent few minutes of ABU silence).

What is your pet hate?
Drivers who block box junctions.

What's your ideal holiday?
Touring California from San Diego to San Francisco via Yosemite National Park.

If you could go back in time, what year would you go back to and why?
I’d go back to the 89th minute of the 1979 FA Cup Final just after Manchester United had equalized against Arsenal and get a message to the team to mark Alan Sunderland for the rest of the game.

If you could meet anyone in the world from any era who would it be? And why?
I’d like to meet George Lucas before he finished the first Star Wars film in 1977 and get him to agree to give me a walk-on part. I’d have accepted anything even if it was a furry alien that gets zapped early on.

What has been your proudest moment?
The birth of my two children.

If you were not a director in the tax knowledge group what other job would you be in?
Given the power of advertising perhaps anything offered by Carlsberg. That aside; I’d probably be an accountant in industry as I trained as an auditor before moving to tax.

What would you like your legacy to be?
A Subaru Legacy 3L 6-speed 245 BHP 4WD.