Morning Briefing – Wednesday, October 2

The Copenhagen Post’s daily round-up of the front pages and other major Danish news stories

Oct 2, 2013

Eldercare bill of rights
The far-left Enhedslisten is putting eldercare at the top of its list heading into budget negotiations. The party says it will seek to establish four basic rights for eldercare that include fortnightly cleaning, an annual spring cleaning, two baths per week and regular outdoor activity. The party’s leaders said the four rights would stop the deterioration of home eldercare services. They suggested setting aside an extra billion kroner annually in order to be able to hire an additional 3,000 home-care assistants. – Jyllands-Posten

Much ado about card fees
Nets, the national payment card processing firm, has taken competition authorities to court over a decision earlier this year requiring card fees to be reduced from 1.90 kroner to 1.20 kroner per transaction. Konkurrencestyrelsen said the requirement was a matter of ensuring that Nets did not abuse its dominant position in the market. Nets counters that Konkurrencestyrelsen is ignoring the emergence of competing forms of online payment. FDIH, the internet retailers’ association, called the suit an effort to by Nets to prevent more of its fees from being challenged at a time when the company is seeking a buyer. FDIH said a lower fee would save consumers 100 million kroner annually. – Erhverv & Økonomi

The optimism is back
Five years after the start of the recession, it appears that the companies are again starting to think about mergers and acquisitions. Firms, according to BDO, a finance house, have experienced moderate growth of late, which would give them the resources for a takeover. Companies also said they were being contacted more often about possible acquisitions. A survey by DVCA, a group of venture capitalists, found that 74 percent of investors believed the number of acquisitions would be higher in the next 12 months than in the same period the year before. – Berlingske Business

Home centre bankruptcies cleaning up crowded market
The recession and cautious acquisition strategies by the major home-centre chains have generated a wave of bankruptcies among lumberyards and other retailers selling supplies to the home construction industry. One in ten such firms has closed in recent years, according to DT Group, which owns the chains Silvan and Stark. The store closings have cost 350 people their jobs. Home centres say that with an on-going decline in buisness that sees industry-wide sales currently at 2002 levels, more closures should be expected. DT Group said it had about 50 stores too many. – Børsen

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Finance and politics don’t mix
Responsibility for administering new EU financial regulations should be put in the hands of civil servants, not elected officials, according to the Nationalbanken, the central bank. Giving lawmakers the responsibility to implement the EU’s newest capital requirement directive would increase the likelihood that decisions would not be made in a timely fashion, if they were made at all, Nationalbanken wrote. Nationalbanken said its recommendation follows the guidelines set out by the International Monetary Fund and the EU. – Information

Editorial Excerpt | The recycling speech
In the prime minister’s self-congratulatory extoling of the past year’s political accomplishments, which unfortunately has become a requirement during the annual opening address to parliament, she praised the government for spending more money on this, that and the other new programme. That’s the tax-and-spend Socialdemokraterne we know: if we make the world’s most expensive public sector even more expensive and if we just recycle more [an initiative put forward in the address], everything will be okay. In reality, the government is out of new ideas and its voters have abandoned it for the opposition. The government has decided not to sweat the big stuff, but instead hope for miracles for as long as it can until it has to call an election. Their suffering should be over quickly. – Berlingske

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