Business Portal

Francoise Hendy Yarde

Francoise Hendy is an international treaties negotiator, specialising in tax, trade and investment. An attorney-at-law and expert in International Tax Diplomacy, she has been head of the Barbados Tax and Investment Treaty Negotiating Team, and its Lead Negotiator since 2003. Recently appointed to represent Barbados on the Steering Committee of the OECD Global Forum on Transparency and Exchange of Information, as one of the Committee's Vice-Chairs, Francoise has been the face of the Barbados' international business brand for over a decade.

Formerly the Director of the Barbados International Business and Financial Services Division, and Director of the International Tax and Investment Organisation, in 2011, Francoise moved to London where she is now engaged as the government's Special Advisor on International Business, Financial Services and Investment from offices at the Barbados High Commission. A graduate of the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, she taught International Economic Law and Foreign Investment Law, at the University of the West Indies as a full-time law lecturer before moving to New York City in 2000. There she worked as a Foreign Legal Consultant to a firm of European attorneys providing advice on lifting the then US trade embargo on caviar.

Francoise has just released her first book, Tax Diplomacy: An Introduction to Tax Treaties, and has begun work her second, Agreed! Getting to 'Yes' in Treaty Negotiations.