Pharma firm has subsidiary in Luxembourg

Bristol-Myers Squibb has a subsidiary in Luxembourg that has one part-time employee, assets of €22.7 billion, and a branch in Swords, Co Dublin.

The company, Bristol-Myers Squibb Luxembourg Sarl, owns Swords-based Bristol-Myers Squibb Epsilon Holdings, and gave its shareholding in that company a value of €21.4 billion in its accounts for 2012.

The Swords company is described as Swiss/Irish in the accounts.

Income to the Luxembourg company from the Irish company in 2012 was €7.6 billion, according to the accounts. The profit for the year was also €7.6 billion. Tax was slightly more than €82,000.

The Irish company is unlimited and does not file publicly available accounts. It is not known if the Luxembourg company has an advanced tax agreement with the tax authorities there.

A request for a comment from Bristol-Myers Squibb had not been responded to by last night.

It is not stated in the accounts of the Luxembourg company why it has a branch here. A number of multinationals with substantial operations in Luxembourg have Irish branches that hold the bulk of their assets. The effect of this is to reduce the wealth tax that would be applied by Luxembourg, which levies a 0.5 per cent net wealth tax on companies.

Staff costs for Bristol-Myers Squibb Luxembourg Sarl in 2012 were €3,700.

Just-eat.com, the Danish online takeaway business, also has a Luxembourg subsidiary with an Irish branch, filings in the Companies Registration Office show.

Just-eat.lu Sarl had assets at the end of last year of DKK461 million (€61.9 million) and one part-time employee. It had loans out to Just Eat Denmark Holdings APS of the same amount, carrying a rate of 4.52 per cent. It was established in March 2013 and opened a Dublin branch, at Granby Place, Dublin 1, that month. The company's accounts are audited by Deloitte.

The Economist Group (Luxembourg) Sarl, part of the Economist media group, had an Irish branch for a number of years. The company's 2005 accounts, the last to be filed before the branch closed, show it paid €4,305 in branch manager payroll costs.

The accounts say that upon incorporation in 1996, the Luxembourg company established an Irish branch on St Stephen’s Green, Dublin, “which took over group financing activities carried out by the company”.

In 2005 loans totalling $47.6 million were repaid to the Luxembourg company by affiliates.

A spokesman for The Economist said the matter was historical.