Grocery chain deal could be illegal

The future of the ICA grocery store chain in Norway was uncertain this week after Norway’s competition authority Konkurransetilsynet ordered a temporary suspension of a cooperative agreement between ICA Norge and NorgesGruppen. The regulators fear the deal, announced earlier this year, would give NorgesGruppen too much market control and violate competition laws, even though Swedish-controlled ICA [...]

Grocery importers to step up control

Several of Norway’s largest grocery store chains plan to increase testing and step up control of their own imported products after Europe’s horsemeat scandal also hit home. They’re urging the entire food industry to take more responsibility for their own goods than they have to date.  “This is a wake-up call for the whole of [...]

Horsemeat scandal reaches Norway

UPDATED: NorgesGruppen, Norway’s largest grocery wholesaler and retailer, announced Friday that it had found horsemeat in frozen lasagne it imports to Norway under the “First Price” brand. Government ministers called an emergency meeting of food inspectors and industry players as a horsemeat scandal that’s spread around Europe hit home. A top executive at NorgesGruppen, which [...]

More stores may open on Sundays

Norway’s Labour Party is clearing the way for a re-evaluation of the country’s laws restricting opening times for retail stores. Since Labour leads the government coalition that still has a majority in Parliament, where some opposition parties already support retail liberalization, residents of Norway may soon be able to shop on Sundays in more and [...]

Bankrupt bookstores get new owner

Notabene, one of Norway’s largest chains of bookstores, is being formally taken over by a new company that’s wholly owned by DNB, the country’s biggest bank and Notabene’s major creditor. The chain filed for bankruptcy last week, six years after its founders sold a majority stake to an investment fund. Newspaper Dagens Næringsliv (DN) reported [...]

New grocery deal hikes price fears

Consumer advocates are sounding the alarms over a deal announced Monday between the long-troubled ICA grocery store chain in Norway and Norway’s most powerful grocery retailer, NorgesGruppen. ICA plans to turn over portions of its purchasing and distribution operations to NorgesGruppen, giving the latter even more power to control grocery store products and prices than [...]

Christmas shopping set new record

It seems to happen every year: Christmas shoppers in Norway broke new spending records again during the run-up to the holidays and also set a new record for use of their debit- and credit cards. This year the amounts involved were enormous. There are only around 5 million people living in Norway, but on the [...]

Luxury retailers boom in Oslo

Norwegians are lusting after designer goods like never before. The Louis Vuitton shop in Oslo now has the highest sales per square meter in the country, and its success is likely encouraging the other top fashion houses that are heading for the capital. As the economic crisis deepens in the eurozone countries, Norwegians are splashing [...]

Hotel owner checks back into shopping centers

Petter Stordalen, the high-profile investor best known for his hotel projects in and out of Norway, has  bought into the large shopping center chain Sektor, along with two other major Norwegian partners: Joh Johannson, the major grocery retailer and wholesaler, and Varner Invest, which also owns clothing store chains including Dressman, Cubus, BikBok and Vivikes. [...]

Border trade rises again

More Norwegians are heading across the border to do their shopping than ever before. New figures from the state statistics bureau SSB shows that Norwegians have spent NOK 11.7 billion in Sweden during the past year, a 9 percent increase from the year before. The number of day trips made over the border rose by [...]

High-powered couple separates

Stein Erik Hagen and Mille-Marie Treschow, the unrivalled power couple of Norway’s business community since they married eight years ago, have agreed to “a pause” in their relationship, website dn.no reported late on Monday. Hagen confirmed the news, saying that “life has different phases.” The news broke on the same day that Hagen, best-known for [...]

Orkla expands its dominance at the grocery store

Orkla AS, one of Norway’s biggest industrial firms, is about to get even more powerful in the grocery store business after finally succeeding with a long-sought acquisition of the venerable family-controlled firm Rieber & Søn of Bergen. The deal immediately set off concerns of reduced competition and higher prices for consumers. Rieber is behind such [...]

ATM and payment scams abound

Dozens of automated teller machines (ATMs) known as “minibanks” in Norway have been hit by various criminal scams again this summer, while several merchants have failed to recover payments made through allegedly fraudulent bank card terminals. They’re furious that the state’s bank payment system isn’t taking responsibility for their losses. Meanwhile, a growing number of [...]

Canadian fund buys Helly Hansen

The longtime Norwegian maker of stormy weather gear that later evolved into high fashion, Helly Hansen, has been sold for around NOK 1.5 billion to the Ontario Teacher’s Pension Plan in a move that nets handsome gains for its investors and several top executives. The Norwegian executives, though, aren’t bailing out of the business. “With [...]

Norway fights legal challenge from international tobacco giant

Norwegian authorities started defending themselves in an Oslo court this week against a challenge to their law that prevents the public display of tobacco products for sale. They’re up again the US-based tobacco giant Philip Morris, which claims the Norwegian law hinders free trade of a legal product. Norway has among the highest taxes on [...]

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