Orla O'Connor

Orla is a US Tax Principal currently based in the KPMG London office with a diverse tax background including reporting/compliance and structuring, due diligence and modeling, and account management. 

Orla’s primary focus is on cross-border tax structuring, with significant experience in domestic US Real Estate and Infrastructure sectors including recent waste management, telecommunications, and gas transactions (both regulated and unregulated), and new product development for single family home and ground lease investing.  Orla also has significant technical expertise in US tax incentive programs, real estate investment trusts (REITs) and US tax withholding matters including the foreign investment in real property tax act (FIRPTA).

Prior to KPMG, Orla served as acting special counsel to the deputy chief counsel (technical) at the Internal Revenue Service, where she reviewed over forty published guidance projects and was lead global tax counsel at The Carlyle Group, where she implemented the firm's publicly traded partnership structure, structured non-US funds investing in Asia, Latin America and Africa and was lead global tax counsel for transactions.  Orla was previously a vice president in the tax planning and advisory group at Goldman Sachs in New York and London, where she had oversight of US tax planning matters for European and Asian businesses.  Orla started her career at Sullivan & Cromwell in New York and also previously worked as a foreign service officer in Mumbai, India.

Orla earned her law degree from Columbia University and her undergraduate degree in foreign service from Georgetown University, studying Arabic at the American School in Tangiers and American University in Cairo.