zinnia @ Luxembourg
Luxembourg’s stable, high-income economy features moderate growth, low inflation, and low unemployment. The industrial sector, which was dominated until the 1960s by steel, has diversified to include chemicals, rubber, and other products. During the past decades, growth in the financial sector has more than compensated for the decline in steel. Services, especially banking and other financial exports, account for the majority of economic output. In March 2010, the Sunday Telegraph reported that most of Kim Jong-Il’s $4bn in secret accounts is in Luxembourg banks Luxembourg is the world’s second largest investment fund center (after the United States), the most important private banking center in the Eurozone and Europe’s leading center for reinsurance companies. Moreover, the Luxembourgish government has tried to attract internet start-ups. Skype and eBay are two of the many internet companies that have shifted their regional headquarters to Luxembourg. Concern about Luxembourg’s banking secrecy laws, and its reputation as a tax haven, led in April 2009 to it being added to a « grey list » of nations with questionable banking arrangements by the G20. Luxembourg adapted some months later the OECD standards on exchange of information and moved into the category of ‘Jurisdictions that have substantially implemented the internationally agreed tax standard
