
Dear AmCham Members, Partners and Friends,
Welcome to the 30 January 2025 edition of your AmCham Newsletter! As every week, we are happy to serve you and welcome your readership!
Last week was really busy but bore great results. We were delighted by the full house turnout for our New Year’s reception on Wednesday evening. We most sincerely thank Spuerkeess for providing us with the best location in Luxembourg for such an event by letting us use their headquarter at Blvd de la Liberté in the center of town. We were especially pleased for Spuerkeess CEO, Françoise Thoma, in her welcoming address, to express pleasure with their involvement with this event and identify it as an annual event! Wow, we are so pleased with this partnership too!
We likewise were delighted to be welcoming for the first time and hearing from the newly appointed Amazon Vice President of Stores for Europe, Mariangela Marseglia who gave an excellent speech. Thank you also to Amazon for sponsoring the food and drinks at the cocktail/walking dinner reception which followed.
And our good friend, the Chargé d’Affaires of the US Embassy, Michael Konstantino, likewise offered a very positive and beautifully presented homage to the historically long, very strong and mutually beneficial US/Luxembourg partnership, both bilaterally and as partners in NATO and other international bodies/organizations. We all benefit from this partnership which pays for 25,000 well-paying jobs in Luxembourg every month, and even more in the United States every month. This is truly an enduring relationship of great historical value and benefit well worth fighting to protect for the future! Thank you Michael for your great speech!
This year we were very pleased to have two principal speakers. First, Minister of Education/Minister of Housing Claude Meisch, gave an excellent speech covering both areas of his responsibilities and ended by inviting me and the AmCham team which has been working on this project, and which has just gained recognition of commitment from the Ministry of Housing to be eligible for 75% subsidy to build affordable housing projects in support our AmCham member companies’ employees. We were very honored to have Yves Stein the CEO of Edmond de Rothschild (Europe) and Chairman of the ABBL join the photo opportunity with our team and Minister Meisch and give a short speech praising this initiative and offering ABBL support. Please see the writeup for this after my Chairman’s remarks along with the following photo gallery and our coverage of the entire event.
Following Minister Meisch, we benefited from an equally excellent and much appreciated speech from our Minister of Home Affairs, Minister Gloden.
Our most sincere thanks to both Ministers for their wonderful informative speeches which were so well received by our invited guests. We look forward to publishing the Ministers’ remarks and written answers to our interview questions with both of them as soon as we receive them back from the Ministers, as featured content in our newsletters in the very near future!
Also in this newsletter, please see the feature article written by the Chair of our Digital Committee, Angela Nickel. In AmCham, we appreciate the value to our ecosystem of digital transformation. We also know that this realm may be new to many of you. Hence, we are placing a priority on providing good content to help expand your understanding of this critical subject area. Thank you Angela!
I am pleased to announce and acknowledge Iulian Datcu as the AmCham CTO. We are very pleased to recognize his voluntary service in this capacity over the past several years and thank him for putting his expert knowledge and tireless voluntary efforts at our disposal to stay on top of our game with regards to internal digital activities and external interface with our customers, colleagues and friends. Thank you, Iuli!
As we start this new year, we are pleased to draw your attention to the AmCham Member Benefits (MBC) discount card program, which offers 10% purchase discounts at over 200 local retail establishments to our AmCham MBC card holders. Each AmCham member company is entitled to get at no cost from AmCham up to 300 of these cards available for free distribution to employees and their partners (with the number of available cards depending on your company’s category of membership). Why pay more for the things you buy when you can buy them by using free cards to get such nice 10% discounts? Ask your HR department for further details or contact Sonja@AmCham.lu or Jorge@AmCham.lu.
Thank you for reading this newsletter, sharing it with your friends and colleagues and for being members of our AmCham family!
And, if you have any questions, comments or suggestions… or if you want to discuss joining AmCham as a member, always feel free to contact me personally at: Paul@amcham.lu.
With respect, appreciation and kindest regards,
Paul Schonenberg
Chairman and CEO
AmCham.lu