Luxembourg Offers Attractive Benefits To Reach International Market. Well-known international companies such as Dimension Data and SES have successfully established offices in Luxembourg and there is an excellent opportunity for the South African tech community wishing to do business in Europe and the rest of the world.

After attending the recent ICT Workshops by Luxembourg for Business – Proud to promote ICT and the Luxembourg Chamber of Commerce, Bramel Business Solutions recognised the advantages to expanding to the European continent. Says Tyrone Niland, a director at Bramel Business Solutions: “The Luxembourg for Business presentation was very professional, highly informative and did an excellent job of conveying the benefits and opportunities available to organisations through the establishment of a Luxembourg office.

The panel of experts accompanying the Luxembourg for Business team was able to provide very valuable information that ranged in subject matter from tax to technical to financial considerations. Finally, it was especially useful to talk to private enterprises (Telecom Luxembourg and SES) that are running successful operations from within Luxembourg as they were able to give us a very real perspective on the commercial environment that the country offers.”

According to Niland, South African corporate finance and private equity firm Bramel Business Solutions is hoping to open a Luxembourg office, on behalf of a client, within the next 12 months. Continues Niland: “Our client’s primary interest in Luxembourg originates from its technology business that provides mobile workforce and business process software to organisations across various sectors. In addition to this, Bramel’s merchant banking and private equity business could benefit from exposure to Luxembourg-based investors, fund managers and banking organisations.”

Tom Kettels of Luxembourg for Business adds: “Luxembourg is multicultural and multilingual and provides unequalled access to Europe’s 500 million consumers. It’s efficient at giving businesses the operating power to reach the European markets faster and more profitably than any other location. We focus on business and you’ll find one of Europe’s most business-friendly environments for ICT companies. Many leading ICT and media companies from around the globe run their European operations from here.”

Niland acknowledges these advantages. “The benefits that our client would hope to obtain are varied and include access to world-class data and network infrastructure that will support a European expansion, as well as access to a very cosmopolitan workforce and skillset to support localisation of our technologies. Furthermore, Luxembourg offers a business and financial framework geared towards supporting technology businesses, a friendly IP environment in which to develop and commercialise IP, and availability of highly skilled technical expertise to participate in the development of software applications and mobile technologies. Finally, Luxembourg also offers access to sophisticated ‘big picture’ investors with an interest in gaining exposure to African businesses and commercial opportunities.

‘We would hope to achieve a credible and successful entry point into the European market for our client that would provide their European clients with confidence in their ability to deliver world-class mobile technologies,” concludes Niland.