Large Luxembourg based company: eBay
eBay is a very unique internet company. While the company itself is based out of California in the United States, a large portion of its business does tie into the area of Luxembourg in Europe. Here are a few of the ties that eBay uses to make the most out of its business.
Luxembourg is a main office for one of eBay's former divisions, Skype. Ebay bought and ran Skype for several years until they sold it off to investors earlier this year. Skype was doing quite well, thanks to it being run by level headed people who were from the area around Luxembourg. They took advantage of special tax privileges and got the business off the ground. However, eBay wanted to take advantage of that as well. Sadly, eBay did not know what to do in order to arrange for that to be done.
That is basically why eBay then decided that they would take over Skype. After all, this company was doing so well and knew what it was doing. Maybe eBay could of learned a thing or two from Skype, maybe they could not. Anyways, eBay then decided to open an office in Luxembourg. One of the nice things that this does for eBay is allow it to open a division that operates in Luxembourg. This means they will play by the tax rules of Luxembourg which can be a great thing for eBay.
The first thing that eBay did right was to open that office in Luxembourg. This just brought them into the European business world the right way. Companies that operate out of this country are respected and thought to hold some of the highest ethics. They are known for doing quite well and will provide for the basic needs of everyone. Anyways, eBay did learn a few things. They did learn some unique efficiency procedures that made their business much more efficient.
Another thing eBay did right was to expand in Europe. While Luxembourg is a great starting point, you need to expand to make the big money. Germany has actually turned out to be one of the biggest markets for eBay. The users there know how to do things right. So much in fact that eBay actually told them that they could do it! The next thing eBay did was to open an extension office in Berlin to support all of the new services for eBay in Germany and the rest of Europe.
