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Foreign companies that fail in Norway rarely fail on their product. They fail on registration, tax, payroll and reporting — decisions taken in the first weeks of operating, long before anyone calls them mistakes.
"Establishing a position is only the first step," said Lukasz Jakubow of Sjølyst Investors AS, a boutique Family and Business Office founded in Oslo in 2016 that advises internationally oriented owners. "After that you have to know how to keep it and grow."
Norway draws foreign business with stable institutions, a transparent administration and high purchasing power. What newcomers underestimate, Jakubow said, is not the difficulty of the rules but their difference from the rules they know.
A company can be commercially successful and still carry avoidable risk if its administrative and financial base was built in a hurry, he said.
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- Where the money is -
The pull is public spending. Norway's National Transport Plan for 2025–2036 sets a financial framework of 1,308 billion kroner, weighted towards maintaining and modernising infrastructure.
Defence accounts for more. The long-term defence plan for the same period assumed 1,624 billion kroner, and in 2026 the government proposed adding a further 115 billion.
Energy, hospitals, data centres and fibre, artificial intelligence and defence-related electronics and materials science are drawing suppliers from abroad alongside them, Jakubow said.
Opportunity, in his account, is not the scarce commodity. "The problem appears later, when the question becomes how to operate in Norway correctly," he said.
- Six places firms trip -
Compliance is treated as a back-office chore and is in practice a financial decision, Jakubow said. He lists six areas that foreign companies tend to handle separately, and that in his experience should be decided together:
- Registration and corporate structure — the legal form chosen at the start, and what it commits the owner to.
- Tax and VAT — reporting routines and filing deadlines.
- Accounting and financial reporting — records that satisfy the authorities and still tell the owner something.
- Employment and payroll — contracts, employer duties, social security, Employee Pension Plans (OTP) and Corporate Health Services (BHT).
- Digital reporting and invoicing — systems that meet the requirements applying to the business.
- Board, governance and risk — who is responsible for what, documented, and the right Business Insurance behind it.
The digital requirements are tightening. From January 1, 2027, companies subject to bookkeeping obligations are to issue business-to-business invoices in a structured electronic format such as EHF/Peppol, with further steps towards digitalised accounting expected to follow.
Choices made at formation reach further than owners expect, Jakubow said: they set taxation, financing, employment costs and the price of any later restructuring.
Obligations depend on a company's legal form, activities and size. Requirements should be confirmed with the Norwegian authorities and qualified advisers.
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- A different set of assumptions -
Language is the barrier newcomers expect, and the one Jakubow rates lowest. Norwegian business practice leans on transparency, direct communication and accountability, and foreign managers often arrive with habits formed where decisions are made differently.
"You can speak Norwegian and still not understand what the client expects, how the administration works, or why a particular formality matters," he said.
The failures, he said, are rarely failures of competence. They happen when experienced professionals apply familiar assumptions in an unfamiliar system.
"We do not just translate languages. We translate two different ways of thinking and doing business."
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- Advice that does not join up -
Most foreign owners assemble their own bench on arrival: an accountant, a lawyer, a tax adviser, a recruiter, a bank. Each does its own job competently, Jakubow said, and the result is still fragmented.
Questions fall between briefs. Financial decisions are taken without the legal consequence attached. Administrative arrangements are set up with no link to what the company is actually trying to do.
That gap is what the Family and Business Office model is meant to close, he said: one party holding the whole picture and bringing in specialists against a single set of priorities rather than a sequence of unrelated instructions.
Work at the firm runs across market entry, strategic and operational planning, financial structuring, accounting and tax through external providers, legal and corporate matters through qualified advisers, and recruitment and employment.
Much of it arrives late. Companies come in already trading, with problems in tax, documentation, contracts or staffing, he said. The job then is not to settle one dispute but to put the operation in order.
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- The first months decide -
No adviser can guarantee a business works, and preparation removes no risk entirely. What the opening months do decide, on Jakubow's account, is whether a company knows its costs, meets its obligations and can spend its attention on customers rather than on correcting its own paperwork.
The starting point he recommends is a plain review: what the owner wants, what structure is proposed, what the operation will require, and which Norwegian obligations it will trigger.
Asked what he counts as success, he set revenue aside.
"For me, success is not only revenue growth. It is solving a real need and building trust," he said.
The measure he uses is an owner who arrived seeing Norway as difficult and unfamiliar, and who comes to treat it as an ordinary part of the business.
"In the end it is not only about getting into Norway," he said. "It is about knowing how to stay here, grow, and build a business that lasts."
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About Sjølyst Investors AS: a boutique Family and Business Office established in Oslo in 2016, advising business owners and internationally oriented clients and coordinating external professional expertise on their behalf.
