Posted on 07/11/2009 10:28:34 PM PDT by bruinbirdman
McDonald's, the fast food giant, will join the ranks of companies quitting the UK when it moves its European headquarters to Geneva later this year.
Senior executives, including Denis Hennequin, president of McDonald's operations in Europe, will be based there.
The US company, which opened its first restaurant in London in 1974, joins other large US corporations that have based their European operations in Switzerland, including Kraft, Procter & Gamble, Colgate Palmolive and Yahoo. Google also chose Zurich for its European headquarters, despite having a large office in the UK capital.
McDonald's said the move "enables us to conduct the strategic management of key international intellectual property rights, including the licensing of those rights to our franchisees in Europe, from Switzerland".
The company stressed it expected its annual tax rate to remain between 29pc and 31pc.
Changes to the taxation of foreign profits linked to intellectual property rights such as patents and trademarks, announced in this year's Budget, led publishing company Informa to move its tax residency to Switzerland earlier this year.
The company has said it would end up paying twice, because of a UK tax on dividends from intellectual property rights abroad.
Home-grown UK companies have also upped sticks in recent years, in search of more favourable tax regimes. The list includes Regus, the temporary office supplier, which has moved to Luxembourg, advertising giant WPP and pharmaceuticals company Shire which are both relocating their headquarters to Ireland, and Brit Insurance, which plans to move to the Netherlands. Investment company Henderson set up a new parent company in Ireland to pay less tax.
McDonald's UK business will continue to be run from London, headed by Steve Easterbrook.
The company's European business has grown faster than the core US division in recent years and is now its
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
I hope so. I prefer swiss cheese.
Unfortunately Nu Labour can cause even more damage to the UK for another year.
It is going to get crowded in Switzerland. Geneva isn’t that big and there were already a lot of European or Overseas HQ’s there. I expect more companies will move their domcile to Switzerland as well.
We lived there for five years a loved it..had a chance to stay indefinitely and passed it up. I sort of regret it.
“They lost their best and brightest in two world wars.
They sent them over the top into machine guns.”
And then taxed the orphans and widows to death.
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