Austria

"Indutrade into the UK and the DACH (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland), where competition for deals was less fierce compared to Sweden. A"

"And it wasn’t just a transfer of knowledge from America to China. Apple had a specific team of Subject Matter Experts, whose job was to research new processes, new materials, new tools, and new machines. “If the current machines, the current technologies in Asia, were not enough for what we were looking for, the SME team would go to Europe or Japan to search for new technologies,” says a former manufacturing design engineer. “They’d try to find new technologies, new labs, new research facilities, whatever—and if they could find it, they’d try to transfer that to China and make in China what we couldn’t do with the current technology.” This person adds: “This happened every year when we had to launch a new product. Because every year we were pushing the envelope and we’d need something new… Apple identified a lot of technology, for example, in the watch industry and jewelry industry in Switzerland, Germany, and Austria, and they’d go to those places, find these special machines—these special technologies for very refined high-end products—and try to adapt those machines into making an iPhone or iPad or Mac.”"

"Since the campaign had begun a year earlier, Napoleon had crossed the Apennines and the Alps, defeated a Sardinian army and no fewer than six Austrian armies, and killed, wounded or captured 120,000 Austrian soldiers. All this he had done before his twenty-eighth birthday. Eighteen months earlier he had been an unknown, moody soldier writing essays on suicide; now he was famous across Europe, having defeated mighty Austria, wrung peace treaties from the Pope and the kings of Piedmont and Naples, abolished the medieval dukedom of Modena, and defeated in every conceivable set of military circumstances most of Austria’s most celebrated generals – Beaulieu, Wurmser, Provera, Quasdanovich, Alvinczi, Davidovich – and outwitted the Archduke Charles."

"René Benko created something great and then destroyed much of it. Solid business operations and trust in the solidity of the real estate business were left by the wayside. Even though the business and legal processing will take years and it is likely that Benko will have to face court, he did not build the castle in the air called Signa alone. He readily found financiers, including wealthy private individuals, bank managers and insurance people, foundation managers, and Arab sheikhs. Benko invited them to his yacht "Roma" or his estate high above Lake Garda, or he quickly flew to Dubai or Abu Dhabi, to Hamburg or Vienna on his private plane. And all the economic experts willingly gave him capital, apparently without really examining his business model. Just as auditors and real estate appraisers played their roles in the illusion theater of the Austrian entrepreneur. The lawmakers in Germany and Austria, who left gaps through which the clever newcomer slipped, also bear some of the blame."

"René Benko created something great and then destroyed much of it. Solid business operations and trust in the solidity of the real estate business were left by the wayside. Even though the business and legal processing will take years and it is likely that Benko will have to face court, he did not build the castle in the air called Signa alone. He readily found financiers, including wealthy private individuals, bank managers and insurance people, foundation managers, and Arab sheikhs. Benko invited them to his yacht "Roma" or his estate high above Lake Garda, or he quickly flew to Dubai or Abu Dhabi, to Hamburg or Vienna on his private plane. And all the economic experts willingly gave him capital, apparently without really examining his business model. Just as auditors and real estate appraisers played their roles in the illusion theater of the Austrian entrepreneur. The lawmakers in Germany and Austria, who left gaps through which the clever newcomer slipped, also bear some of the blame."

"Their former foundation board director, Werner Müller, former Federal Minister of Economics, wants to increase the foundation's capital to be able to bear the billion-dollar costs for water management regarding the mining shafts left behind. "So far, we have largely invested in government bonds. But since their interest rates are currently lower than inflation, there is a decrease in value," Müller said in an interview with Rheinische Post in 2013. In the future, they plan to invest up to 35 percent of their assets in the private economy. "For example, we are looking for medium-sized companies in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria that already have a strong position in the market.""

"Their former foundation board director, Werner Müller, former Federal Minister of Economics, wants to increase the foundation's capital to be able to bear the billion-dollar costs for water management regarding the mining shafts left behind. "So far, we have largely invested in government bonds. But since their interest rates are currently lower than inflation, there is a decrease in value," Müller said in an interview with Rheinische Post in 2013. In the future, they plan to invest up to 35 percent of their assets in the private economy. "For example, we are looking for medium-sized companies in Germany, Switzerland, and Austria that already have a strong position in the market.""

"Acquaintances had advised them to shift the family's focus abroad, to protect the children. They were to gain distance from the drama unfolding at home: Signa's bankruptcy and René Benko's deep personal decline from a star entrepreneur and Austria's richest man to a loser."