[docdeek]

Do you know if there is a reason they would not domicile in Malta? It's an EU Member State, English speaking, and if buying off politicians in Ireland is easy, it must be easier in Malta with a population of only 550,000 people.

[jdietrich]

Malta is simply too small to accommodate the European headquarters of a major tech company. It's not enough to just put a brass plaque on a door - you need to actually run your EU operations primarily in that country. Meta and Google have thousands of staff in Ireland.

Malta is (along with Gibraltar) a preferred destination for gambling operators.

[noirscape]

My guess is just physical/lazy reasons. Before this, they were homed in the UK, whose special arrangements meant that they could avoid a lot of EU regulations that way.

Then Brexit happened and they just moved to the nearest available option.

[rsynnott]

Yeah, this is pretty ahistorical; most multinational tech companies already had their EU headquarters in Ireland before Brexit. A lot of companies _did_ move operations from the UK to Ireland (or sometimes the Netherlands) as a result of Brexit, but it was mostly financial and insurance companies (plus some pharma, medical devices etc), and those didn't generally move their headquarters if they weren't already in Ireland.

[diffuse_l]

I'm pretty sure Ireland was home to a lot of global corporations EU headquarters way before brexit...

[trollbridge]

Malta is no longer trying to be an "offshore" destination with lax regulations.