Monaco $400 Million Penthouse Lures Tax, Secrecy Migrant

Monaco, the tax haven on the French Riviera, is experiencing a luxury-housing boom that includes the world’s most expensive penthouse as developers prepare for an influx of millionaires and billionaires escaping higher taxes or a loss of banking privacy.

A “flow” of new residents is emigrating from Switzerland, where financial-secrecy laws are crumbling, said Jean Claude Caputo, managing director of broker Savills Plc (SVS)’s French Riviera unit. They’re drawn by the principality’s “security, sophistication and climate,” he said — as well as for financial reasons. The Swiss government signed an accord in May to automatically share bank data across borders.

“High-net-worth individuals want to be in this part of the world,” Caputo said as he drove in his Audi Quattro to Monaco to brief Swiss private bankers on the property market there and help them advise clients considering a move.