Nordic Merger Mania

The fact these companies have not issued ADRs also means they are largely ignored by international shareholders, adds Collett. Currently there are no ETFs in Nordic technology either. But investors who want to pick up some of these companies will not find it difficult, especially if they are investing more than $10,000. "The fees that U.S. brokers take for purchasing Nordic equities are tiny," says Collett.

Collett holds big positions in two Norwegian technology companies he believes may be potential takeover targets in the future: Vizrt, which makes digital streaming devices for television channels, and Opera Software, which makes Web browsers for cell phones.

Opera has already been busy making deals with U.S. tech companies. On Friday, Opera announced it was entering into an exclusive partnership with Yahoo!; the search engine will be the exclusive provider for search on the Opera Mini and Opera Mobile browsers. So far, more than 1 billion pages have been surfed using the browsers, says the company, which is also expected to strike another exclusive deal with Apple's (AAPL) iPhone later this year.

"The tech proposition in the Nordic region is so attractive to U.S. companies principally because here companies design and agree on a standard very quickly. If you can decide on platform, whatever you're producing is very easy to roll out," says Collett.

>To order reprints of this article, click here: Reprints