Dear AmCham members, partners and friends,
Welcome to your 29 January 2026 AmCham Newsletter!
Last evening, we hosted a good-sized (and very high quality!) group of you all for our AmCham New Year’s reception! My very sincere thanks to Spuerkeess for welcoming us into their magnificent headquarters “19 Liberté” on Avenue de la Liberté and to Amazon for generously and kindly hosting our cocktail party networking reception.
The AmCham team and I were delighted to welcome our two distinguished guests of honor speakers: Claude Wiseler, President of the Luxembourg Chamber of Deputies, and Stacey Feinberg, our United States Ambassador to Luxembourg.
In my invitation letter to Mr. Wiseler, I told him that our attendees would be a global audience of AmCham members, partners and friends all of whom are largely composed and focused on international business issues and concerns. On that basis, I asked him to identify the current major topics of interest to the members of the Chamber of Deputies and explain their opinions about those issues to us as they develop solutions to enact into law. I was very pleased that Mr. Wiseler did that and also generously engaged with you all individually and in small groups during our post-presentation networking.
Ambassador Feinberg has hit the ground running since her arrival in early November, and we were very honored and pleased to have her with us. This past evening was my ninth event in her company since her arrival in Luxembourg. I am strongly convinced that we are fortunate to have her, both as a person and also in her position. I believe we all enjoyed her strong speech last evening and appreciated her so enthusiastically taking advantage of the opportunity to meet and engage with you all during the networking reception!
We are living and working during an exciting and challenging period. Luxembourg is a small, landlocked country surrounded by Germany, France and Belgium, a small country which formerly was part of Holland, which is also not very far away. With the domestic steel ore already used up, Luxembourg is not a country with rich natural resources. By all reasonable metrics, we should not have become the success story we have become after the second world war.
Luxembourg has become successful by being and remaining:
1. Geographically centrally located in the middle of Europe
2. Small, every ones friend and no ones enemy (absolutely not a threat to other countries!)
3. Multi-lingual with a historically low tax, pro business orientation, very welcoming to external companies and expat employees.
Luxembourg has also benefited from a very strong friendship and alignment with the United States. During the second world war, the Luxembourg royal family fled to the United States and were welcomed by President Roosevelt. Then General Patton liberated Luxembourg, Perle Mesta came to Luxembourg to be the post-war Ambassador and American Industry came to Luxembourg under the Marshall plan to contribute to economically rebuild the country. The US strongly supported the establishment of the pan European coal and steel community which subsequently has grown into the European community structure and NATO, for our common defense. In recent years, American financial companies came to Luxembourg to create the Luxembourg financial center and, most recently, the US has supported the development of the Luxembourg space and digital sectors.
America, American companies and AmCham.lu are committed friends and supporters of Luxembourg every day and in every way. We actively discuss and work together to ensure freedom, prosperity, and our continued mutually beneficial partnership within the Trans-Atlantic economic alliance which has so benefited all of its members.
I am also pleased in this issue to publish an interview with Claudia Halmes, the Managing Director of LaLux insurance, an AmCham member company which we very much respect, appreciate and recommend. Please enjoy her interview and all of the rest of the content in this newsletter.
My respect and very best wishes,
Paul Schonenberg
Chairman and CEO
AmCham.lu