Articles
Here we publish articles on law that we believe many people will find useful and enjoyable to read. We do not aim to be the first to cover current news or to provide exhaustive updates on new legislation, but rather to contribute to knowledge that may be useful over the long term.
Our articles are written in Norwegian. They deal with Norwegian law and are written for Norwegian readers, so we publish them in that language only. The summaries below say what each article covers and link to the full text.
Investing in unlisted companies
The stock market pays investors for systematic risk, not for the risk attached to a single company. A broad, low-cost index fund is therefore the natural benchmark against which any other strategy should be measured. Of the 29 081 companies listed in the United States between 1926 and 2025, 46 accounted for half of the net wealth created, only 48,2 % of the shares gave a positive return, and the median return over the whole holding period was −6,9 %.
A minority holding in an unlisted company concentrates precisely the company-specific risk the market does not pay for, and it cannot be sold at will. The article sets out how the required rate of return is built up, what minority and marketability discounts amount to in Norwegian practice, and which valuation standard applies when shares are redeemed under sections 4-17 to 4-26 of the Norwegian Companies Act. It closes with what can be secured in a company’s articles of association, what belongs in a shareholders’ agreement, and why both must be negotiated before the money is paid in.
Read the article (in Norwegian)
Handling a dispute
Irrational handling of disputes transfers value systematically, from clients to lawyers and from irrational to rational parties. In the empirical study by Kiser, Asher and McShane, claimants had misjudged their position in 61 % of the cases and defendants in 24 %, measured only against costs awarded by the court. Counting the costs the parties bore themselves, the error rates are higher still.
The article works through the cost rules of the Norwegian Disputes Act, how litigation value can be assessed with explicit probabilities rather than impressions, and how prospect theory explains the settlement decisions parties actually make. It ends with eight practical recommendations for anyone facing a dispute.
Read the article (in Norwegian)
The Trikkebyen case
Trikkebyen is a housing company in Bergen: 111 flats at Møhlenpris, held through shares in the company that owns the buildings. For close to a century an association believed that it owned Trikkebyen, while the residents believed that they held nothing more than tenancies, to be surrendered on moving out for a payment of between NOK 10 and NOK 2 000.
The case was won in Gulating Court of Appeal, with full costs awarded. It is told here both as a case history and as an illustration of how a party’s reference point governs what it believes itself entitled to, and how long a mistaken belief can survive unexamined.