Complete victory for Røkke (dn.no)

After further intense negotiations Kværner’s board reached an agreement late last night with Kjell Inge Røkke. The agreed solution will give Mr Røkke complete control of the company, with a shareholding of between 40 and 60 per cent. The solution which now looks set to rescue Kværner from bankruptcy is almost an exact copy of the proposal Aker Maritime announced last Thursday. Despite previous signals from Yukos Oil’s Norwegian representative, Bernt Stilluf Karlsen, the Russian oil company has now also accepted a financial solution in line with Kjell Inge Røkke’s demands.

Yukos Oil withdraws its rescue plan (dn.no)

Yukos Oil, Kværner’s second largest shareholder, is backing the agreement reached between the boards of Aker Maritime and Kværner, and has withdrawn its own proposed rescue plan. Yukos was contacted by Kværner’s board after its negotiations with Kjell Inge Røkke. The Yukos plan was withdrawn because it would not have had the support of 2/3 of the shareholders at Kværner’s extraordinary general meeting on Thursday and because "Yukos is conscious of its responsibility to prevent Kværner going bankrupt", said Yukos in a press release.

Will back down (Verdens Gang)

In deepest confidence Carl I. Hagen has given the governing coalition a guarantee that he will back down if Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik demands a vote of confidence this evening. Behind closed doors Mr Hagen promised that he and Progress Party deputy chairman Siv Jensen will recommend that the party’s parliamentary group support the Government if Mr Bondevik forces the issue and threatens to resign if his budget proposal is not adopted. But in his wake Mr Hagen left behind some uncertainty as to whether his party’s parliamentary group, in uproar over the Government’s budget, would follow his recommendation.

Stoltenberg played away (Dagbladet)

"For the entirety of the election campaign the Labour Party was playing on an away pitch. We focused on what we were doing, not why we were doing it. This is something the whole party leadership must take responsibility for," said former State Secretary Raymond Johansen. "We must acknowledge that we took power on the back of a difficult and unpopular issue, gas-fired power stations. The issues we focused on before the election were hospital reform, the privatization of Statoil, defence restructuring, modernization of the public sector, changes in the VAT system and sick pay scheme. Each one of these is important for Norway’s future development. But they did not ignite any enthusiasm in the Norwegian people.

Lifelong account number (Dagsavisen)

The Consumer Council wants you and I to own our own bank account number regardless of which bank we use. In that way it will be easier for people to switch banks as often as they like. This is perhaps the only way to force the banks to cut their artificial interest rates and huge charges, say the Council.

Government gives go-ahead to free use of private hospitals (Aftenposten)

Patients are to be allowed to choose between private and state-run hospitals. The Government is fulfilling the promises it made in the Prime Minister’s inaugural speech, and Health Minister Dagfinn Høybråten is already preparing to let private hospitals enter the market. There are around 100 beds at 8-9 private hospitals in this country. The private hospitals will be paid in the same way as the state-run hospitals through a scheme known as ‘treatment based financing’. The scheme is thought to be ready for implementation shortly.

Munch thief gets hands on another Munch painting (Dagbladet)

In 1988 Pål Enger stole Edvard Munch’s painting, ‘Vampire’, from the Munch Museum. In 1994 Munch’s ‘Scream’ disappeared from the Norwegian National Gallery, and Pål Enger was convicted in connection with the theft. It therefore caused something of a stir when the infamous Munch thief turned up at an art auction and finally got his hands on a real Munch painting – legally.

Worth Noting

• KLM has made good money out of the airline industry bonanza in Norway. Dagbladet knows of calculations made by Braathens which indicate that the Dutch airline has milked the Norwegian market for NOK 1 billion a year since 1998. (Dagbladet)
• The deep-sea divers who sustained permanent injury as they lay the foundations for Norway’s North Sea oil industry will not have to pay tax on the compensation Statoil is planning to award them. (Dagbladet)
• In October the number of hotel guests in Oslo fell by 10 percentage points compared to the same period last year. (Dagens Næringsliv)
• Like many employees at Pan Fish, chief executive Arne Nore and chairman Bjarte Tunold have invested their way into a nightmare of debt following the collapse of the company’s share price. The are now being forced to sell almost all their shares in the fish farming company on the orders of major creditor Fokus Bank. (Dagens Næringsliv)
• A drop in share prices resulted in a 5.3 per cent negative return on investment for the Government Petroleum Fund in the third quarter. This is the worst quarterly return since investment of the petroleum fund began in 1996. (NTB)
• Kjell Mange Bondevik wants to be ‘Prime Minister for the poor’. But people do not believe the budget is designed to improve the lot of the poor in Norway, according to an opinion poll just carried out by Opinion for the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions (LO). Dagsavisen

Today’s comment from Verdens Gang

Foreign Minister Jan Petersen’s defence of US plans to create military courts to try suspected foreign terrorists does not hold water; particularly his claim that this is undoubtedly an internal US matter since the September 11 attacks affected targets on American soil. (…) But in his eagerness to support the USA our Foreign Minister seems to have forgotten that the war is not a purely American affair – something the USA itself has ensured by its invocation of article 5 of the Nato pact. This means that all Nato countries are taking part in a war against international terrorism. We therefore expect Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik to raise the military courts issue with George W. Bush when he meets the US President in the White House next week.