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Sweden’s Investor cuts losses

Swedish holding company Investor reported on Wednesday that it had cut its net losses to 3.02 billion kronor ($368 million) for the first quarter.

Published: 15 April 2009 15:28 CEST

In the corresponding period of 2008 the group, which is controlled by the influential Wallenberg family, reported a loss of 8.93 billion kronor amid heavy market turbulence.

For the January to March period, Investor saw its net asset value drop by 24.7 percent to 109.7 billion kronor from 146 billion a year earlier.

“The general economy will be in disarray for most of 2009,” Investor’s chief executive Boerje Ekholm said in a statement.

Investor holds stakes in more than 130 companies worldwide.

Among its main holdings are Swiss-Swedish engineering group ABB, Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical group Astra Zeneca, Swedish bank SEB, white goods maker Electrolux, industrial equipment manufacturer Atlas Copco, and the world leader in telecoms networks, Ericsson.

Investor, which is among the first of a slew of Swedish companies to present their first quarter earnings reports in the coming weeks, is considered a good indication of the Swedish business climate.

Ekholm said some economic indicators, such as unemployment, were expected to worsen.

“But in several areas it feels like the pace of economic contraction is slowing,” he said.

“This could be a first step towards stabilisation,” he added.

Investor said it saw the current economic crisis as an opportunity to make long-term investments.

“We see the current environment as providing unusually attractive opportunities and we are convinced that 2009 and 2010 will be great vintages for investments when measured over a 10-year horizon,” it said.

The first quarter was marked by “successful” new share issues in bank SEB and outdoor power product maker Husqvarna.

“We believe SEB has a capital base that can sustain the bank through a difficult economic environment in its core markets including the Baltics,” it said.

Credit ratings agency Moody’s last week downgraded SEB’s ratings due to its heavy exposure to the economic crisis in the Baltics, where the bank has invested heavily.

Investor also noted that it had acquired a 23-percent stake in Swedish pharmaceuticals group Biovitrum for 595 million kronor.

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Was Norway ill prepared for the Covid-19 pandemic?

Photo by Eirik Skarstein on Unsplash

The 450-page report was submitted to Prime Minister Erna Solberg by medical professor Stener Kvinnsland, who led the review.

The commission found that, generally, Norway had handled the pandemic well compared to the rest of Europe. That was in part due to citizens taking infection control measures on board.

“After a year of pandemic, Norway is among the countries in Europe with the lowest mortality and lowest economic impact. The authorities could not have succeeded if the population had not supported the infection control measures;” the report states.

However, the commission’s report also outlined that Norway did not properly prepare itself for the pandemic.

“The authorities knew that a pandemic was the most likely national crisis to have the most negative consequences. Nevertheless, they were not prepared when the extensive and serious Covid-19 pandemic came,” it said.

Prime Minister Erna Solberg said during an interview with the commission, conducted as part of its work, that the government did not have an infection control strategy of its own.

“We had a ‘we have to deal with a difficult situation’ strategy. We had to do everything we could to gain control and get the infection down. It was really only at the end of March (2020) that we found the more long-term strategy,” she told the commission.

Low stocks of personal protective equipment were another source of criticism in the report.

“The government knew that it would in all probability be difficult to obtain infection control equipment in the event of a pandemic. Nevertheless, the warehouses were almost empty,” Kvinnsland said at a press conference.

Norwegian health authorities were praised for the swiftness with which they implemented infection control measures. But the commission said that the decision should have been formally made by the government, rather than the Norwegian Directorate of Health.

READ MORE: Norway saw fewer hospital patients in 2020 despite pandemic

The implementation of restrictions in March 2020 was critiqued for failing to ensure that “infection control measures were in line with the constitution and human rights.”

One-fifth of municipalities in Norway lacked a functioning plan in the event of a pandemic according to the report, and the government did not provide enough support to municipalities.

“We believe that government paid too little attention to the municipalities. The municipalities were given much larger tasks than they could have prepared for,” Kvinnsland said.

The report was also critical of Norway’s lack of a plan for dealing with imported infections in autumn 2020.

“The government lacked a plan to deal with imported infections when there was a new wave of infections in Europe in the autumn of 2020,” the report found.

“When the government eased infection control measures towards the summer of 2020, they made many assessments individually. The government did not consider the sum of the reliefs and it had no plan to deal with increasing cross-border infection,” it added.

The report also concluded that Norway allowed itself to be too easily lobbied by business when deciding to ease border restrictions last summer.

The division of roles in handling aspects of the pandemic was scrutinised in the report. Here, the division of responsibilities between the Ministry of Health and Care Services, The Norwegian Directorate of Health and the Norwegian Institute of Public Health were unclear.

The prime minister has asked the commission to continue its work.

“We are not done with the pandemic yet. Therefore, it is natural that the commission submits a final report. There will also be topics where the learning points can only be drawn later,” Solberg said.

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