Champagne problems I guess but making a new company (equivalent to a UK Ltd or USA LLC) takes *so* long in Sweden.

It's a very frustrating, serial, process which took two months to the day:

1) Soft-submit forms
2) Go to the bank to get a certificate to prove you're solvent etc (+1 week at least)
3) With certificate, actually submit forms
4) Wait (+1-2 weeks)
5) Company!
6) Wait you might need to pay tax? That's more forms!
7) Wait (+1 month)
8) Operational company!

The bank thing is weird, and very chicken-and-egg. The company registration agency requires a certificate from a bank to prove that you have the capital to start a company.

The bank, obviously, will be A Bank™ and add untold levels of complexity to this. Once you succeed, you pay your starting capital into a black hole to get the certificate you need to submit the paperwork to start the company.

Weeks later, once the company exists, a bank account will appear with your money in it. Hooray!

During this process, it occurred to me that this effectively means that registering a company in Sweden is gated by corporations — the banks — rather than the government.

I'm not particularly anti-establishment, but even I raised an eyebrow at that.