Dean Anderson

How to Invest in Norway

Statoil indeed is an excellent proxy for Norway. And so would NPRO be if it was not a company thrown together by shrewd salesmen just to bring them a quick profit by pumping the net results before selling out. The property stock to use as a proxy for Norway is Olav Thon. Only tradable in Norway, ticker olt.ol on yahoo for instance. As for banks as Norway proxy the biggest is DnB, dnb.ol on yahoo, government controlled like Statoil, but with a solid free float on the Oslo Stock Exchange or as dnbhf in the US pink sheets.
Despite some strengths it is also important to remember that Norway is not paradise. Extreme oil dependency, no industrial base to speak of and clear symptoms of dutch disease are among the problems. And so is politicians wanting to waste the huge oil-fund of USD 80k per person under politicians control.