If you can’t buy happiness, perhaps you should move to Helsinki. Finland has emerged from a 10-year economic depression to be ranked by the UN last week as the happiest place to live on the planet. The most important factor in Finland topping the UN’s happiness ranking is the country’s history of equality. It has managed to strike an amicable balance between the sexes, between workers and bosses, and within the education and welfare systems. An equal society can bond together to survive the bad times when so many countries pull themselves apart.

At the turn of the century Finland was riding high. It boasted one of the world’s most successful tech companies – Nokia – and a had a well-deserved reputation for embracing the internet revolution. It had escaped from the shadow of the Soviet Union to become a robust neighbour to Russia.

Then Nokia found itself on the wrong side of the smartphone revolution, following the launch of Apple’s iPhone. Slow to react, it went into terminal decline. After the financial crisis hit, Finland was unable to recover.

By 2016, and after five years of declining national income, the economy had stabilised. Last year the bounce-back finally took hold and the economy is estimated to have grown by 3.2%. This year the country’s largest bank, OP Financial Group, says gross domestic product is expected to keep up the pace of expansion at 3.3%.

Yet this recovery takes Finland back only to where it was before the financial crisis. The UK, by contrast, bounced back to its 2008 peak in 2014. The US recovery was even quicker. So why, when the UK, the US and many other European countries have contended with huge populist waves that have culminated in a vote of no confidence in their ruling political elites, has Finland remained happy?

There is balance between the sexes, between workers and bosses, and within the education and welfare systems

A state education system that shepherds all children through to 18 without the need for selective or private schooling has for many years kept the country at or near the top of the rankings of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

During the 1990s, research and development in Finland was around the highest in the developed world, at 4% of GDP; while it has slipped back to just below 3%, it remains among the best in Europe. The health service and welfare programmes remain universal, even if not quite as generous as they once were. Its state broadcaster is ranked alongside the BBC as among the most innovative in Europe.

Tech companies such as the games studio Supercell, creator of Clash of Clans, has taken over where Nokia left off, paying more than €800m in tax and producing seven of Finland’s top-10 income tax payers in 2016. Not that Nokia has disappeared. It is still a major manufacturer and the largest employer, with 102,000 staff, followed by escalator maker Kone. The salaries of the best-paid 10,000 or so workers are published for all to see.

All these areas of Finnish life exemplify a cooperative spirit that commentators say is born of the harsh climate. The cold forces people to be independent and overcome inhospitable conditions. It also forces them to come together to achieve things, nurturing a degree of neighbourliness that extends into public life and state policies.

Nevertheless, the period of economic depression has been scarring. The rise of the far-right True Finns party, which elected an anti-immigration hardliner as its leader last year, is evidence of that.

The conservatives who control the coalition government were the most vocal critics of a bailout for Greece, and are currently pushing through parliament steep cuts in healthcare that will force more Finns to go private. This move, which may dent the happiness figures, is in response to one of the most rapidly ageing populations in Europe.

Airbus could shoot down hopes GKN sale will be blocked

Turnaround specialist Melrose is a seasoned deal-making warrior with a string of takeover scalps under its belt, but its £8.1bn hostile tilt at engineer GKN is proving to be its most bruising battle yet. The proposal is already facing fierce opposition from trade unions and a cohort of MPs, including party leaders Jeremy Corbyn and Vince Cable.

Opponents of the deal have branded Melrose an asset-stripper that can’t be trusted not to rip the guts out of a key player in Britain’s industrial landscape. The government has also indicated that it is mindful of concerns about national security: GKN makes parts for military aircraft including the Typhoon fighter jet and A400M transport plane.

But noises from Whitehall have suggested that GKN might not be pivotal enough to Britain’s military power to warrant interference in private enterprise. Enter aviation titan Airbus, diving out of the sun to launch a volley at Melrose’s plans.

Airbus is GKN’s biggest customer, accounting for nearly £700m of sales, or nearly 7% of the company’s revenues last year. It warned last week it could not support the sale of a major supplier to Melrose, which it feared had short-termist intentions. Like pilots, aircraft manufacturers prefer to see a long way ahead of them.

There may yet be hope for Melrose. Airbus had been miffed at a perceived “lack of engagement” from the company and could be using public scepticism to strengthen its hand in private talks. A sit-down scheduled for the end of the month will give Melrose the chance to flesh out pledges such as continued spending on research. Airbus could also seek to strong-arm Melrose into future price reductions in return for support.

Engineering champion Rolls-Royce, which accounts for 3% of GKN’s £3.4bn aerospace sale​s​, has made it clear that it won’t stand in Melrose’s way. So if Airbus can be brought around, MPs and unions could yet be drowned out by the roar of jet engines.

Honesty not the best policy when you’re moving HQ



Why blame Brexit for a decision to leave the country and trigger the resentment of 17 million referendum voters? Unilever must have calculated that a planned move to the Netherlands could spark protests from Brexit voters if it blamed their electoral preference for its decision.

The Anglo-Dutch maker of Dove soap and Hellman’s mayonnaise will instead move its headquarters to Rotterdam as part of a restructuring to simplify management decision-making.

The previous London/Rotterdam split HQ may have worked for decades, during which time the company has become one of the world’s largest consumer products firms with a £50bn turnover, but not any more. The uncertainty surrounding the outcome of Brexit negotiations was of no consequence, it said.

Maybe Brexit wasn’t the main reason. Maybe Unilever, having sold the margarine and spreads business developed by the Dutch half of the firm, needed to offer a sop to the Amsterdam government. Or it could be that its board of directors, top-heavy with Dutch executives, wanted a move to favour their homeland.

They certainly denied that the Dutch were better at protecting firms from unwanted takeovers and that that was the reason for the move. Unilever, let it not be forgotten, recently fought off an aggressive £115bn takeover bid by Kraft, the voracious US cheese- and cereal-maker that earlier swallowed Cadbury.

So we can’t know the real reason. And that will probably be the case whenever a British company with large foreign holdings or a foreign owner says it is moving a factory, a division or the HQ, and then claims Brexit played no part in its thinking.

It would be foolish for a large firm, especially one that deals directly with the public, to say that the loss of the single market and customs union lay behind a decision to quit: it might leave a bad taste in British mouths.