Europeans ‘less hard-working’ than Americans, says Norway oil fund boss

Nicolai Tangen, chief executive of the $1.6tn fund, told the Financial Times it was “worrisome” that American companies were outpacing their European rivals on innovation and technology, leading to vast outperformance of US shares in the past decade.

“There’s a mindset issue in terms of acceptance of mistakes and risks. You go bust in America, you get another chance. In Europe, you’re dead,” he said, adding that there was also a difference in “the general level of ambition. We are not very ambitious. I should be careful about talking about work-life balance, but the Americans just work harder.”

He added that in recent discussions with US chief executives, they had complained about the difficulty of doing business in Europe because of tough regulations and red tape.

“I’m not saying it’s good but in America you have a lot of AI and no regulation, in Europe you have no AI and a lot of regulation. It’s interesting,” he added.