And, for good or bad, it is also much easier to both expand/hire and close/downsize in Scandinavia than in other parts of Europe. At least in Denmark and Finland, maybe less so in Sweden. (Norway is really expensive to hire anyone, though).

This flexibility to lay off people is not always a win/win for employees (considering Nokia/ALU merger right now) but I think that investors generally overestimate the bureaucratic difficulties in Scandinavian countries in this respect. Scandinavian countries are very free market economies despite being "socialist".