Norway Daily No. 140/00

THE ROYAL MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS, Oslo
Press Division

NORWAY DAILY No. 140/00
DATE: 26 July 2000

ACCIDENT RISK ON THE RISE IN OFFSHORE OIL SECTOR (Nationen)

The oil companies and the Norwegian authorities both stepped up their safety standards following the Kielland platform accident in 1980, but there are signs that safety offshore has declined since then. "Safety standards have dropped nearly to the level of the 1970s, and the risk of major accidents is rising accordingly," says Jan Hovden, professor of safety management at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in Trondheim.

EDUCATOR PROPOSES TUITION FEES (Aftenposten)

Tove Bull, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Tromsø, suggests that Norwegian students should pay part of the cost of their own educations. An appropriate tuition fee for medical students, for example, would be NOK 50,000. As justification for her proposal, Ms. Bull points out that the universities are being funded at the "threshold of starvation". Government funding per student is declining despite the fact that a higher percentage of the population receives university educations. Drastic measures are therefore necessary, in her view.

SMALL INVESTORS STAND TO LOSE (Dagsavisen)

The struggle brewing over Kværner is likely to have an impact on the financial affairs of many small investors. Among the major shareholders in both Kværner and Aker Maritime is a long list of major Norwegian unit trusts (in the US: mutual funds) representing over 500,000 investors. Every one of them will take a loss if Kjell Inge Røkke exercises the power he has acquired in Kværner to force the purchase of his own corporation, Aker Maritime, at a price far exceeding its stock market value.

BRENDE CASTIGATES LINDHOLT (Verdens Gang)

Børge Brende, a prominent Conservative politician, has fired off a broadside against National Insurance Administration Director Tore Lindholt. "Mr. Lindholt has no business acting as if he were director of the Values Commission. He is Director of the National Insurance Administration, and his job is to obtain good yields on NIA funds," says Mr. Brende, who is astonished that Mr. Lindholt has spoken on behalf of the NIA without first having gained the backing of the board.

RØKKE’S RAID A SOLO RUN (Dagens Næringsliv)

Kjell Inge Røkke’s raid on Kværner was a solo play by Røkke and his men. Mr. Røkke controls only 63 per cent of Aker Maritime, but none of the other shareholders is represented on the board. The largest of the other shareholder is Den norske Bank, which controls eight per cent of Aker Maritime equity via various unit trusts. There are three employee representatives on the board, but they were not informed until the day before the raid began.

PROGRESS REBELS DISREGARD HAGEN (Dagbladet)

Progress Party mavericks Øystein Hedstrøm and Vidar Kleppe couldn’t care less about party chairman Carl I. Hagen’s campaign to turn Progress into a serious party. The executive committee, with Mr. Hagen in the lead, recently censured Mr. Hedstrøm for having held a closed meeting of like-minded party members. But in open contempt of the party chairman, the two rebels are now putting on a political show in Fredrikstad, with all of their "friends" in the party’s parliamentary group invited.

WORTH NOTING

• Hans Gotfred, chairman of the Norwegian association of unit trusts, says Kjell Inge Røkke’s behaviour does not bode well for the interests of other shareholders. He urges unit trusts and small investors to consider selling off their Kværner stock while they can still get good prices. (Dagsavisen)
• Aker Maritime’s senior employee representative, Atle Tranøy, has asked Kværner employee representative Rolf Utgård to moderate his criticism of Kjell Inge Røkke. (Dagens Næringsliv)
• The Government has halted the full privatization of Arcus, the entity formed when the production and distribution divisions were split off from the state-owned wine and spirits monopoly as required under the EEA Agreement. According to the budget compromise from late in 1998, all Arcus equity was to be put up for sale on the stock market. But the Labour Government has decided to retain a 34 per cent stake in order to safeguard contracts with Norwegian potato farmers. (Aftenposten)
• Retiring EU ambassador John Madison urges Norwegian opponents of EU membership to reconsider the issues. Things that were somewhat true in 1972 and less true in 1994 may be completely false now, he says. (Nationen)
• Many Norwegian children accompanying parents who move abroad because of their jobs have a difficult childhood. The Ministry of Children and Family Affairs has now turned its attention to the plight of these children. (Dagsavisen)
• Thirty years ago, one worker in ten in Norway was employed in a business based directly on natural resources. This figure has now dropped to 6 per cent. (Aftenposten)
• Oslo receives more funding than any other municipality in Norway for language instruction for linguistic minorities. But Oslo is also the worst municipality in Norway at accounting for how these funds are spent. The City of Oslo has now been ordered to rectify the situation. (NTB)
• Norway’s public libraries are criticized for being slow to take modern technology into use. Yet they reported a 700,000 increase in the number of loans last year. (Dagsavisen)

TODAY’S COMMENT from Dagbladet

Le Monde, one of the leading newspapers in Europe, has given our ancestors some surprisingly positive attention in its latest weekend edition. The focus was on Olav Trygvasson in the latest of a series of in-depth articles on 12 heroes from the last millennium. Kong Olav, best known among Norwegians for his ability to run along the oars of his ship while his men rowed, was portrayed as a representative of a nation which played a leading cultural role in its day. According to the article, the Vikings were merchants and mariners who made valuable contributions to Europe’s advancement. A process of extensive historical revision is under way, and a gradual change is taking place in how historians view the Vikings. The image of the Vikings as bloody warriors was created by the historians of the 19th century to bolster Norwegian identity. But force was not their only means of dealing with people. Trade and culture had a prominent place as well.