Dr. Branka Niemann
née Lončarević

Branka Niemann was born and raised in Germany, where she studied economics and earned a doctorate from the University of Heidelberg.

While still a student in the early 1990's, she became jointly responsible for the introduction of the new liberalized tax system in Croatia, and worked as a tax consultant to the government.

Dr. Niemann became a scientific member of the Economic Research Center at the University in Heidelberg (Heidelberger Steuervilla) and focused her studies on international tax law, devoting her dissertation to the treatment and avoidance of double taxation.

On completing her studies, Dr. Niemann was employed by one of the 'Big Four' accounting firms to work in Croatia. In 2005 she decided to establish her own consulting firm UBLI savjetovanje d.o.o. Zagreb, with the goal of offering clients a more individualised service.

Today, Dr. Niemann is considered one of the foremost tax experts in Croatia, particularly with regard to international tax issues.

Dr. Peter Schmidt

Peter Schmidt is a German citizen with a rich history of scholarship and practical commercial experience in the areas of economics, finance and taxation. He has studied, taught and worked in many countries, including two years spent in the young Croatian republic in the early 1990s, when he was instrumental in the formulation of tax regulations.

A long association with academia started for Peter at the University of Tübingen in Germany, where he obtained his degree in Economics and Regional Studies. This led to a full DAAD scholarship to the University of Virginia, USA, where he studied Business, followed by a work placement in Brazil. With doctoral studies beckoning, Peter returned to his first alma mater, the University of Tübingen.

It was as part of his doctoral studies that Peter first came to Croatia in 1992. Over the following two years he spent much of his time here, supporting the financial authorities of the fledgling republic in the development of a regulatory framework for taxation. Peter contributed a great deal, particularly in the area of Value Added Tax, where he was responsible for authoring the VAT by-law.

Having obtained his Ph.D. in Economics, Peter pursued his passion for music, and opera, gaining a Master of Music degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder, USA. He later returned to Germany to take up a finance position at Munich music publisher ECM. After years of developing structure and controls moved on into the field of property development in Germany, becoming the financial wizard behind many real estate developments in the country.

Peter's move to Zagreb in 2008 to take up a partnership position with UBLI is in many respects a home-coming, as he returns to his specialisations of accounting and taxation, and to the country he first discovered and fell in love with some fifteen years ago.