Stefan Kraus

Stefan Kraus is Chief Operating Officer and an Executive Committee member at Henley & Partners, the residence- and citizenship-by-investment advisory firm, based in Vienna. He previously worked in consulting and private equity, including at McKinsey & Company, and holds an MBA from London Business School.

He oversees group IT and human resources and is responsible for the firm’s delivery offices, the back end of a business whose product is paperwork done correctly in jurisdictions that do not forgive mistakes. He joined as chief of staff before taking the operating role, and advises clients on Austrian residence and citizenship from the Vienna office.

Henley & Partners has done more than any other firm to turn residence and citizenship by investment into an industry, advising both applicants and the governments that design the programmes, and publishing the index that ranks passports by the access they give. That places Kraus close to a question the Free Cities movement approaches from the other direction: once citizenship can be applied for, priced and compared across countries, it behaves like a service, and services compete.