A few years ago, Christian Seehusen read a story in a newspaper that immediately grabbed his attention. A well-known German bread-producing company was considering building a production site in Schleswig-Holstein. For most readers, this probably wasn’t the day’s most exciting story. But for Seehusen, it was potentially very big news indeed.
Seehusen called the company to ask if they would be interested in locating their factory over the border in Denmark. As an investment manager for Denmark’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Seehusen’s job is to attract companies to the country. And once he and the bread company had “gone through the numbers”, it became clear that the factory would be in Denmark, not Germany. “We calculated everything and we could show them that corporate taxes were significantly lower in Denmark,” Seehusen explains.
Making connections
Born in 1984 in Lyngby-Taarbæk, a suburb of Copenhagen, to a Swiss mother and Danish father, Seehusen studied economics at Copenhagen Business School. He spent a semester in Berlin and also worked in Rostock as an executive assistant at a construction company. While still a student, he started his own company, which “recruited blue-collar employees to Denmark”.
This early experience was good preparation in terms of skills, knowledge and contacts for his future job with Invest in Denmark. He then sold his company, completed a master’s and moved to Berlin to become an investment manager, with a particular focus on identifying interesting start-ups in the digital industry. After two and a half “wonderful years” doing this, Invest in Denmark offered him his dream job.
Seehusen is one of some 70 investment managers working around the world for Invest in Denmark. Around half are in Denmark and the rest in locations including Bangalore, Barcelona, Beijing, London, Munich, New York, Paris, Silicon Valley and Tokyo. Based in Hamburg at first, Seehusen has been in Munich since 2019, focusing on the “DACH” countries: Germany, Austria and Switzerland. His job is to make setting up a business in Denmark as easy as possible. His office identifies potential investors and provides a range of advisory services — from legal advice to how to structure a company. It also establishes introductions to relevant business people and public authorities, and offers aftercare services, such as helping with business expansion and identifying new business opportunities.
An attractive business environment
Seehusen is helped by what many experts agree is an advantageous Danish business environment. The World Bank ranks the country as the fourth best in the world — behind New Zealand, Singapore and Hong Kong — in its latest “Doing Business” scorecard. Germany, Austria and Switzerland are 22nd, 27th and 36th, respectively. Denmark comes first in “trading across borders”, fourth in “construction permits” and eighth in “paying taxes” yet, interestingly, only 45th in “starting a business” and 48th in “getting credit”.
One can be sceptical of such rankings on the complex issue of “ease of doing business”, but there is little doubt that Denmark is an attractive place for investment. Seehusen points out that you need DKK 40,000 (€5,380) to set up a business in Denmark, compared with the minimum share capital of €25,000 for a limited company (GmbH) in Germany. In addition, says Seehusen, “you don’t need a tax adviser, which you do in Germany”, because you do everything online via an app. “It’s all done in a few days, and the managing director doesn’t have to live in Denmark.”
The lower price of land in Denmark compared to Germany has also played a role in persuading companies to choose a more northerly location. One recent example is Navato, a nanotech start-up founded in Berlin. In February 2021, the company bought a 10,000-square-metre area of land that comes with what Seehusen describes as a “beautiful old palace”.
Navato is a green start-up providing coating-free nanotech solutions for the automotive, satellite and aerospace sectors. Invest in Denmark helped Navato to find land that matched the company’s requirements: away from railway lines and high-voltage cables in the Danish countryside in an area surrounded by water. Seehusen also ensured that the company had excellent contacts with universities that could facilitate nanotech collaborations and provide master’s students with real-life assignments. With its Nordic headquarters in the process of being built in Denmark, Navato is aiming to expand its collaborations to other Nordic countries.
Further examples of Invest in Denmark’s successes include the Swiss software company Luxoft, now also registered as a Danish company, and VIU, a Swiss optician’s that specializes in designer glasses. Equally important has been the establishment of TÜV SÜD in Denmark, which has set up a medical notified body for MedTech Europe, the European medical technology industry’s trade association. The establishment of TÜV SÜD generated “€2 million from the Danish state”, says Seehusen, and will create between 80 and 120 new jobs.
Opportunity, not threat
A country of 5.8 million people, Denmark competes not only with Germany, Europe’s strongest economy and a nation of 83 million people, but also with neighbours Sweden and the Netherlands. Seehusen points to Denmark’s competitive advantages of its well-educated, tech-savvy population and its high level of flexibility, reflected in the fact that Danish society and its businesses are generally less hierarchical than in Germany.
Seehusen’s own experience has shown him that there is much more deference shown to bosses in Germany. “In Denmark, your boss is more likely to bring you a coffee and ask how you are,” he says. He also contrasts the fact that, while people in Germany might view the introduction of robots as a threat, the typical Danish reaction would be more likely to see them as an opportunity, for example for employees to take on different roles.
“Danes are much more digital natives than people in Germany,” says Seehusen. In the European Commission’s 2020 Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI), Denmark came third, behind Finland and Sweden. Germany came 12th and Austria 13th. Denmark is also ranked as the best EU country for “connectivity”, such as 4G coverage, 5G readiness and for the high number of people who use the internet.
In many ways, Denmark is a country that punches above its weight economically. It is praised for its high (though expensive) standard of living, its world-leading environmental policies and its natural environment. In the 2020 Yale University Environmental Performance Index, Denmark’s environmental performance was ranked as the best in the world and Copenhagen is arguably the world’s most environmentally friendly city. Christian Seehusen’s passion for both his job and his home country is obvious. Yet he is delighted also to call Munich his home, with its easy access to Austria, Switzerland and the Alps. And with a Danish father and a Swiss mother, and living and working in Germany himself, Seehusen is more than comfortable defining himself as a European as well as a Dane.