The world should consider adopting the Nordic approach to capitalism and learn from the region’s response to its financial and economic crisis in the 1990s in the attempt to stave off recession, according to the chairman of two of Europe’s biggest companies.

Jorma Ollila, chairman of Nokia, the mobile phone maker, and oil major Royal Dutch Shell, said the Nordic style of capitalism was characterised by openness to globalisation balanced by strong government programmes to protect people from its excesses and an egalitarian education system.