ebay, another in a hoped for parade of techno giants, settles its European headquarters in the Grand Duchy.

Cast your 15% VAT upon the water and it will come back to you, or at the very least the favourable rates will lure more internet commerce entities like ebay to settle in Luxembourg. On 27 October, Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker announced that eBay would in future carry out its European activities from Luxembourg, even though it will maintain its offices at its existing administrative centre in Switzerland.

This came as particularly good news in light of the fact that only weeks before, AOL announced that it will be leaving Luxembourg, a move that could cost the state an estimated 140 million in all important tax revenues. eBay stated in April 2006 that it expects revenue for the year to be between $5.7 billion and $5.9 billion. According to CNN finance, Wall Street analysts, on average, have been expecting a full-year revenue of $6 billion. Thus eBay"s boost to the economy is timely indeed.

What the move actually means for Luxembourg in terms of the size of the eBay set-up or the number of forecasted employees remains to be seen. Catherine England, media spokesperson for eBay in the US, would only say, "We are not seeing any new information at this time. We do already have employees in Luxembourg who are specific to Skype but we also already have representatives in other operations as well. The decision to consider the location was because we already had people there."