Market manipulation requires forethought. Cronies getting a text the night before an announcement is just opportunistic insider trading. Even if you can draw a straight line through the corruption, that straight line can't be longer than the attention span of the key player.
People should end up in jail, unfortunately it's the people responsible for enforcing the law that are breaking it. I expect impeachment attempts within the next year or so.
Avoid Luxembourg like the plague unless you are a company like Amazon. And even them are making a massive mistake form a governance and risk management point of view of being based there. But they have their tax deal...
- They are optimized for Big funds, Holding structures and Multinationals
If you are a bootstrapper, or small company or any early
stage startup, the ecosystem works against you.
- Setup costs are absurdly high if you include Notary
around plus possibly Lawyer, Bank onboarding
plus accounting you are looking at burning €10k to €20k
easily before making a cent.
- The scourge of the state Fonctionnaires. Untouchables and incredibly well paid state employees. One told me would take care of my long delayed VAT returns... AFTER they would return from their long summer holidays in Switzerland ...
- It only works if you have some special deal like the famous Mr Marius Kohl also known as Monsieur Ruling used to do...
"Leaked Documents Expose Global Companies’ Secret Tax Deals in Luxembourg"
https://www.icij.org/investigations/luxembourg-leaks/leaked-...
- Banks will treat you like a criminal by default and assume, you are laundering money, or hiding taxes and you are compliance risk. They have extreme KYC requirements, and do account freezes for trivial reasons.
- Accounting is rigid, expensive, and slow. Taxes are not low in practice. On paper, it all looks good, but in reality they have the Corporate tax and municipal tax. Many complex withholding rules and limited deductions unless
structured perfectly.
- The legal system is slow and formal. Everything takes a lot of time
and a LOT of paperwork with more costly intermediaries. Small changes
like directors, statutes will force Notary, Formal filings, Delays.
- The ecosystem is completely closed and relationship driven and the few startups
like Talkwalker and Doctena are coming and financed from local families.
Luxembourg runs completely on local networks and specially reputation over
merit. If you are not local, from finance, or law or government circles you are
invisible.
- Incredibly promiscuous relationships between the banks, law and legal professions, with a permanent revolving door between local companies and banks management and government officials. We are talking about less than just a few hundred people. This means Luxembourgeois families with long term historical relationships. Good luck on any legal or business dispute between you...and a local, who is a cousin from the local judge or government official....
I have had the chance of setting up and running companies in many countries. Specifically for Europe, currently I would suggest as two best options right now: Estonia and the Netherlands. Avoid France, Luxembourg and definitely avoid Germany.
Wow thanks for the long reply, unfortunately many if not most of your points are common in all of Europe. I asked you to clarify because I am not only curious about the topic but I strongly believe that these issues should be talked about way more frequently and reach when possible the general population.
Most people are completely unaware of the risks and difficulties of running a company in our countries.
In Italy for example the tax agency operates on a model that is often no different from extortion and innocent people can suffer greatly because of it, I have seen it happen.
I am skeptical that EU Inc will solve all the main problems or even that it will become reality at all but let's see.
> Banks will treat you like a criminal by default and assume, you are laundering money, or hiding taxes and you are compliance risk. They have extreme KYC requirements, and do account freezes for trivial reasons.
I see that everywhere though; my banks in my birth country NL, one of which I have used since I was born (my parents made an acc obviously) half a century ago treat me like that every year. Achtung! We are not sure who you are, provide a lot of paperwork or else! Worse even in other countries. And they are all very afraid of US residents.
reply