Located in the heart of Europe, Luxembourg is a gateway to the European market with more than 550 million consumers. Due to its political and social stability, skilled and multilingual workforce, state-of-the-art infrastructure, excellent connectivity to markets, favorable legal environment and attractive tax climate, Luxembourg offers an exceptional range of assets and opportunities for doing business in Europe.
Since the beginning of the 1960s, the Luxembourg government has been implementing a vigorous economic development policy which has made it possible to successfully reshape the country`s economic structure. From a steel-based economy, Luxembourg has developed into a world-renowned international financial centre and prime business location. More recently, the government has put emphasis on developing new sectors such as Information and Communications Technology (ICT), e-commerce and media, automotive components, materials and plastics, logistics, health and environmental technologies. Today, the results of this policy are clear: Luxembourg is home to the most outstanding companies that are all global players. ArcelorMittal in steel, Cargolux in air freight, SES in satellites, and RTL Group in media are today leaders in their fields. They are either headquartered in Luxembourg, or else they originate from Luxembourg.
Foreign investors have, over the last decades, also continued to choose Luxembourg as a base for their European operations: Gazprom and Sistema from Russia, Goodyear, Delphi, Dupont de Nemours from the United States, Fanuc from Japan, Mittal (Ispat) and Tata from India as well as Sam Hwa Steel and Hyosung from Korea are only some examples of major multinational companies that have become mainstays of the Luxembourg economy. Recently, the Grand-Duchy has become home to the ‘stars` of the ICT sector: AOL, Amazon, eBay, Skype, PayPal, Digital River, Napster and iTunes are household names that elected Luxembourg as their European headquarters.
The Luxembourg - Russia business relations are intense and developing rapidly. Luxembourg is, in absolute figures, one of the five biggest investors in Russia and has invested between 20 and 25 billion € per year. Many Luxembourg companies are active in Russia and a huge number of them have established representations in Moscou and beyond. Companies like ArcelorMittal, Lindab-Astron, Guardian Luxembourg are setting up production facilities in Russia. Vice-versa, Russian companies benefit from the advantages offered by Luxembourg and use Luxembourg as the platform for their business in Western Europe.
The Luxembourg Russian Business Forum is an institution to support the further development of the business relations between the two countries. I hope you find on our web pages all the information you need in order to succeed in doing business with Luxembourg and Russia.
Ralph Siebenaler
