Norway

Norwegian shipping firm Bulk Invest said on Thursday it had filed for bankruptcy after failing to win backing for a financial restructuring needed to survive in difficult market conditions, Reuters reported. Spot rates in the dry bulk shipping market are close to all-time-lows and far below breakeven rates after years of lower demand growth and a wave of new dry bulk vessels entering the market. Bulk Invest is the first European dry bulk shipping firm to go bankrupt this year.

Havila Shipping has announced a restructuring plan which it expects will sustain it through approaching "severe financial challenges" from 2016 to 2018, Lloyd’s List reported. The offshore supply company has been discussing a debt restructuring with its creditor banks for months, according to a company statement. It pointed to oversupply in the offshore market, which has led to widespread lay-ups and left active vessels earning rates below operating costs, as factors affecting its decision.

The collapse of oil prices has claimed its first bankruptcy victim in Norway’s offshore industry, and analysts warn more may follow, Bloomberg News reported. Dolphin Group ASA, a seismic surveyor that maps the seabed for oil and gas reservoirs, became the first Oslo-listed company in the industry to file for bankruptcy Monday. One of its competitors, Polarcus Ltd., is in talks on restructuring debt -- but the threat won’t stop there, with insolvency cases bound to multiply among drillers as well, analysts say.

Seismic surveyor Dolphin Group is filing for bankruptcy, the firm said on Monday, after a prolonged fall in crude prices has reduced the amount of work available from oil companies, Reuters reported. Oil companies have slashed spending as crude price have dropped around 67 percent since mid-2014. Seismic surveyors, which map out the seabed in search of oil and gas deposits, have suffered as a result. "Due to the continued deterioration in the oil service market Dolphin has had to make the decision to file for bankruptcy," the firm said in a statement.

The Norwegian mining subsidiary of Australia's Northern Iron Ltd will file for bankruptcy on Wednesday as its $100 million debt has become unsustainable, Northern Iron told a new conference on Wednesday. Attempts to find new investors for the Sydvaranger Gruve AS mining firm, which has close to 400 employees, had also failed, it added. The two largest creditors were top Norwegian bank DNB and government investment agency Innovation Norway, Northern iron said.

Norske Skogindustrier ASA’s senior and junior bondholders have presented competing plans to restructure the Norwegian papermaker’s $1 billion of debt, according to people familiar with the matter. Rothschild and Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, which are advising a group holding Norske Skog’s 290 million euros ($329 million) of senior bonds due 2019, met with the company to discuss a possible debt-for-equity swap, said two people, who asked not to be identified because negotiations are private.

Norway’s central bank cut interest rates to a fresh record low as it battled to overcome a slump in oil prices that has hit the economy of western Europe’s biggest petroleum producer harder than during the financial crisis, the Financial Times reported. Norges Bank cut its overnight deposit rate, the amount that banks earn by parking their spare cash at the central bank, by 25 basis points to 0.75 per cent and warned that more cuts were possible.

Innotech Solar has filed for insolvency, blaming its predicament on “general uncertainty within the European PV market”. The filing was made at Narvik in Norway on 24 March, the company said. German subsidiaries ITS Innotech Solar Module GmbH, ITS Halle Cell GmbH and Energiebau Solar Power GmbH, Cologne, also filed for insolvency on 25 March. The insolvency of the three German subsidiaries affects a total of 120 employees. Their wages and salaries will be secured until the end of May by the German Insolvency fund.

Iron ore miner Northland Resources SE has filed for bankruptcy with more than $650 million in debt following a failed attempt to refinance the business, the Oslo-listed company said in a statement on Monday. "The dramatic fall in iron ore prices this year made it impossible to raise the required financing, which was a prerequisite for continued operations," Northland board Chairman Olav Fjell said. In its third-quarter earnings report last month Northland said its total debts by the end of September stood at $657 million, while cash and cash equivalents were $10.5 million.

Cracks are beginning to appear in the vaunted Nordic model. The four main Nordic countries – Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden – still grace the top of most global rankings for happiness, competitiveness, the best place to be a woman and even the best place to be born. That has won them a legion of admirers, from Bill Gates to Scottish nationalists and The Economist, the news magazine, who marvel at the Nordic region’s ability to sustain big welfare systems and competitive economies.