In 2022 Norway’s third richest man, Kjell Inge Røkke, announced in an open letter to shareholders he was moving to Lugano, Switzerland.
“My capital will continue working in Norway,” wrote the fishing magnate turned industrialist who launched his empire four decades ago with a 69-foot trawler he bought while saving money working on ships off the coast of Alaska.
Røkke, who Forbes estimates has a fortune of $5.1 billion, will cost the Norwegian government an estimated 175,000,000 kroner annually (roughly $16 million) with his departure. That might not sound like a lot of money, but Røkke is not the only wealthy entrepreneur leaving Norway, The Guardian notes.
“More than 30 Norwegian billionaires and multimillionaires left Norway in 2022, according to research by the newspaper Dagens Naeringsliv,” reports wealth correspondent Rupert Neate. “This was more than the total number of super-rich people who left the country during the previous 13 years, [the paper] added.”