In its May Conjoncture Flash report published on Wednesday, it recorded 33 firms had had opted to relocated to Luxembourg to maintain ease of access to the European market. The insurance sector appears to have been the biggest draw, attracting 10 businesses, followed by funds (9), banking (6), capital investment (5) and other financial activities (3).

“Of the companies that have confirmed they will be moving to the grand duchy, very few have announced how many potential jobs this move will entail,” the report author wrote. The 250 figure was a “conservative estimate because most figures available do not go beyond January 2018 and some companies have only just set up operations in Luxembourg because of Brexit.” The author further said that it was impossible to evaluate the number of indirect jobs created.

“Compared to the 14,000 jobs created in the Luxembourg economy as a whole in 2017, these 250 jobs might seem quite modest,” the report said. “However, they are far from marginal when set against the 1,280 net jobs created in the financial sector alone last year.”

The estimate is somewhat more conservative than the 3,000 jobs forecast by the head of Luxembourg for Finance Nicolas Mackel in an interview with Sky News in September 2017. It is also closer to the prediction of finance minister Pierre Gramegna, who put post-Brexit job creation in Luxembourg closer at around a few hundred jobs, at most.

Economic slowdown

The report was not all rosy, however, with the author pointing out that the UK is a major trade partner for Luxembourg. With economic growth slowing, thanks to slackening household consumption and a drop in investment expenditure, Luxembourg could bear some of the brunt of this slowdown.