Geneva's Mont Blanc McDonald's sports the new look
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The latest company to leave the UK and move to Switzerland is fast food giant McDonald’s, which will shift its European head office to Geneva later in 2009, the Tribune de Geneve reported late Friday. European president Denis Hennequin and a small team of possibly a dozen people will make the move. The Tribune says the company will be housed in the former offices of Bank Mirabaud on Boulevard du Théâtre, but the company has said only that details will be announced closer to the date of the move.
The UK’s Telegraph newspaper links the move to a change in the UK’s “taxation of foreign profits linked to intellectual property rights such as patents and trademarks” but it notes that the company stresses its tax rate will remain virtually unchanged.
Cisco Rolle: showing guests the quality of large-screen networking
San Jose, California, USA (Bloomberg) – Cisco is selling $4 billion of debt, only the second sale of its bonds in 25 years, as part of measures to cut costs in the face of falling sales worldwide of networking equipment.
Rolle, Vaud, Switzerland (Le Matin, Fre) – Chiquita, the food company based in Cincinnati, Ohio in the US, will open a new European head office in Rolle, becoming the 15th international company to open shop in the town since 2003. The company registered in Vaud in December 2007, the deadline to take advantage of fiscal incentives that were made possible by a Swiss federal programme to build up disadvantaged industrial zones. The company reportedly plans to have some 100 employees at the new A-One Business Center complex, according to Le Matin. Other newcomers include Cadbury-Schweppes and Yahoo, neither of which has yet moved into the town, and Bank Pictet and Cisco, already established.
