Austrian-Canadian billionaire gives up his flat in the Metalli complex

According to an article published in the Sunday edition of the Neue Zuger Zeitung, the Austrian-Canadian billionaire Frank Stronach has definitively left his flat in the Metalli Centre in the city (photograph), after a period of 18 years.
 
As the journalist who wrote this article noted, Stronach’s name was still able to be seen at the entrance to his former flat at number 13b Industriestrasse, though there is no mailbox there anymore. After 18 years, the businessman behind the highly profitable Magna International Inc company has finally left this token address in the canton.
 
At one time, the 83-year-old entrepreneur had thought of setting up his European headquarters in Switzerland, hence the reason for renting this flat. However, four years ago, in an interview with the Neue Zuger Zeitung, he admitted he was thinking of giving it up.
 
It was 11 years ago that the Canadian newspaper Toronto Star claimed that Stronach, who enjoys both Austrian and Canadian nationality, had chosen Zug as his personal headquarters as a way of avoiding Canadian income tax. The Bilanz economics magazine, too, is certain Stronach hid his private wealth here.
 
Zug Estates, the company which owns the flat formerly rented by Stronach, confirmed that he had not been a tenant since 1 July 2015 having signed a tenancy agreement in 1997. It is known he has a number of other residences around the world, his main one being in a small town in the Austrian province of Styria, in Weiz in fact, where he has been an honorary citizen since 2002. It is here, too, where he has sponsored an events room capable of seating 600 people.
 
However, Stronach, a breeder of racing horses and owner of race courses, has not completely left the canton of Zug as his limited partnership company, Stronach & Co, and his Magna Automobiltechnik GmbH (Switzerland) company are still registered at number 20 Hinterbergstrasse in Cham. The first-named company, an economic and financial advisory business, was set up in 1994, originally at number 16 Baarerstrasse, but in 2011 it moved to a more anonymous location on the industrial zone between Cham and Steinhausen.
 
The article goes on to say how Stronach was born in Kleinsemmering, near Weiz, initially training to be a toolmaker. It was in 1954 that he set off to Canada with $200 in his pocket setting up what was to become Magna International Inc in a rented garage. Now the company, with its 90,000 employees and $20 billion turnover, is one of the largest suppliers to the automotive industry in the whole of North America and headquartered in Aurora, Ontario.
 
Not that Stronach’s activities are restricted to horse-racing and commerce. In 2012 he set up Team Stronach, a new economic-liberal, European-sceptical, populist political party, as a protest against the red-black alliance in Vienna. It soon found support with no fewer than six members sitting in the Austrian parliament. “Perhaps it is out of political correctness that the entrepreneur has given up his flat in Zug. He always was a fan of Switzerland and lived in Bern for a year before leaving for Canada. What is more, he is a great football fan and sponsors the Austria Wien club, making him a sort of equivalent to Dietrich Mateschitz of Red Bull fame,” wrote the journalist.
 
It all makes one wonder what amount of tax Stronach pays here. What is true is that he never made “one-off” payments. “As a result of tax secrecy laws, we are not allowed to divulge such matters,” said Guido Jud, the head of the Zug Tax Office, when asked.