GENEVA, SWITZERLAND – Bloomberg, the business news agency, and its partner Business Week, have put Caterpillar’s Swiss operations squarely in the spotlight with a lengthy article that is being widely picked up by US media: it questions whether the company’s use of Geneva for some tax savings purposes is legal under US law. The Peoria, Illinois company has had its European head office in Geneva for several decades and, like many foreign companies, it benefits from some tax exemptions organized through the Geneva Economic Development Office.
The debate was provoked by the 2009 case brought by Daniel Schlicksup, a Caterpillar whistleblower, who is a lawyer who was a global tax strategy manager for Caterpillar from 2005 to 2008, according to Bloomberg. He is asking for his old job and stock options back, saying he was demoted as a result of arguing that the company avoided some $2 billion in taxes by using its Swiss base illegally.
This is the third and last of three articles that together make up the English version of a feature published 2 April 2009 by Swiss news weekly L’Hebdo magazine on expatriates in the Lake Geneva region. GenevaLunch, a partner of l’Hebdo brings you the English version.
French version © 2009 l’Hebdo
English version © 2009 GenevaLunch (may not be reproduced in part or whole without written permission.)
[Part 3, continued] By Julie Zaugg and Mehdi Atmani
How did Switzerland become a nation of expats?
French-speaking Switzerland has an attractive infrastructure, with an international airport at the edge of Geneve, efficient public transport, good hospitals and top universities that are at the front lines of research and serve as conduits for interesting technology transfers,” says Blaise Matthey, director of the Fédération des entreprise romandes (French-speaking business federation).
Updated 15:40 Peoria, Illinois, USA (GenevaLunch) – Caterpillar, whose European government affairs office, with financial and marketing services, is in Geneva, announced Monday that it will cut 20,000 jobs in the expectation that 2009 will be its worst year since world war two.
