Mats Odell

Mats Christer Johannes Odell (born 30 April 1947 in Värnamo parish) is a Swedish economist and politician of the Christian Democrats (Kristdemokraterna). He represented Stockholm County in the Riksdag from 1991 to 2014, aside from leave while he was a minister, after a one-month spell as a substitute member in 1988. He was minister for communications from 4 October 1991 to 7 October 1994 in Carl Bildt’s government and, from 6 October 2006 to 5 October 2010, minister for local government and financial markets in the Ministry of Finance under Fredrik Reinfeldt.

The parliamentary biography he supplied names his parents as the pastor Hans Johan Algot Carlsson and the teacher Hanna Margareta Odell. It records a realexamen in 1964, a commercial upper-secondary examination in 1967, and studies at Stockholm University from 1968 to 1972, and describes him as self-employed in care services from 1970. Nationalencyklopedin describes that work as elderly care and records that he chaired the Christian Democratic Youth League from 1975 to 1981.

As communications minister he put his name, with Bildt’s, to the government’s March 1993 bill for a telecommunications act and for authority to turn the state telephone agency Televerket into a limited company. After the centre-right lost office in 1994 he sat on the Riksdag’s finance committee through 2006, as its deputy chair from 1998 to 2002, and later chaired the committee on industry and trade in 2010–12 and again in 2013–14.

In Reinfeldt’s Alliance cabinet his portfolio combined municipal affairs, housing and financial markets. A change in housing-subsidy rules at the end of 2006 produced a rush to pour foundation slabs before the old grants expired; the Institute for Language and Folklore recorded the noun Odellplatta for those slabs, formed from his name. On the state’s asset-sale programme, Reuters reported that in March 2008 Pernod Ricard won the auction for Vin & Sprit, the state-owned maker of Absolut vodka, at €5.63 billion, which the agency called the centrepiece of Sweden’s largest privatisation push.

He left the cabinet after the 2010 election and was the Christian Democrats’ parliamentary group leader from 7 October 2010 until 20 February 2012. At an extra party congress on 28 January 2012 he challenged Göran Hägglund for the leadership and lost by 198 votes to 88; the following month he resigned as group leader, telling SVT that the decision followed from having challenged the leader. In October 2013 he said he would not stand at the next election, and his Riksdag term ended on 29 September 2014. The Riksdag again elected him to the General Council of the Riksbank for 11 October 2022 to 13 October 2026, a body he had also sat on while a member of parliament.

Early life and education

Family and upbringing

Mats Christer Johannes Odell was born on 30 April 1947 in Värnamo, in the southern Swedish province of Småland. The Riksdag biography, compiled from particulars he supplied for the handbook Fakta om folkvalda, names his parents as the pastor Hans Johan Algot Carlsson and the teacher Hanna Margareta Odell. A later report on the family’s care business identified his mother as Greta Odell-Carlsson and stated that in the 1950s she took over Vallbostrand, a group home in Vallentuna.

He was brought up in a free-church household in which the Swedish Pentecostal movement was the church. A 2006 profile described his father, Hans Carlsson, as programme director of IBRA Radio, a Christian station with international broadcasts, and as one of the founders of the party that became the Christian Democrats, then called Kristdemokratiska samhällspartiet. Odell said that his father helped bring German children to Sweden after the Second World War, and that Willy Brandt, identified in the article as then governing mayor of Berlin, gave Carlsson the German Red Cross medal after about 5,000 children had been hosted. The parents, he said, had asked Småland congregations for host families and had themselves taken in several children for a few months. They later ran a care home, which the profile called the origin of the family firm Bellstasund.

Published accounts do not agree on when the family left Värnamo. The 2006 profile places the move to Vallentuna, north of Stockholm, at the age of eight. A 2007 report on the parental property—a large yellow manor above Lake Vallentuna, where the parents ran a home for people with intellectual disabilities—dates Odell’s arrival there to 1960, when he was 13. Except for some years in a student corridor at Lappkärrsberget, he lived on the property until he was 49; he and his sisters inherited it in the mid-1970s, and he moved away in 1996. In 2006 he lived in a tenant-owned flat in Täby and said that he still held his Christian faith and remained in the Pentecostal church, though he seldom attended and did not call himself a biblical literalist. In December 2008 Dagen reported that he belonged to the Pentecostal congregation in Vallentuna.

Population-register extracts list him as Mats Christer Johannes Odell, with a personal identity number beginning 19470430. His father used the surname Carlsson and his mother Odell. The Riksdag biography does not mention another surname for him, and a 2017 birthday notice stated that he was born Mats Christer Johannes Odell. No dated record of a change from Carlsson appears in those sources or in the interviews cited here.

Studies

The same parliamentary biography records a realexamen, the lower-secondary leaving examination, in 1964 and a handelsstudentexamen, the commercial upper-secondary examination, in 1967, followed by studies at Stockholm University from 1968 to 1972. It gives his title as economist but does not record a completed degree. Nationalencyklopedin describes his occupation as self-employed in care for older people, and the Riksdag note states that he was self-employed in care work from 1970.

He later said that he was studying economics in Stockholm during the 1968 occupation of the university’s student-union building, and that he then met both Anders Carlberg, who took part in the occupation, and Carl Bildt, who opposed it. He said he joined Opposition ’68, the student party formed against the occupation and associated with Bildt, and that he afterwards defeated Bildt in an election to the board of Sveriges Ungdomsorganisationers Landsråd. He also said he never finished the economics course, partly because his father died in 1970 and partly because political work took his time; he married Elisabeth the same year.

Christian Democratic career before 1991

Youth league

Mats Odell's early party career was inside the Christian Democrats, then Kristen Demokratisk Samling (KDS), which had not cleared the Riksdag's 4 per cent threshold. Alf Svensson was elected party leader on 20 January 1973 after Birger Ekstedt, chair since the party was formed in 1964, died in 1972. In Riksdag elections from 1970 to 1982, Statistics Sweden records the party's share of valid votes at 1.8 per cent in 1970 and 1973, 1.4 per cent in 1976 and 1979, and 1.9 per cent in 1982.

He chaired Kristen Demokratisk Ungdom (KDU), the youth league founded in 1966 at a party meeting in Sundsvall. The start year is reported differently. The biography he supplied to the Riksdag for Fakta om folkvalda states that he was national chair from 1975 to 1981, and Nationalencyklopedin gives the same years. The youth league's own historical note instead lists him as a former chair for 1973–1981. Profiles published when he left full-time politics in October 2013 use that earlier date: Sveriges Television wrote that he became youth-league chair in 1973 after Svensson, and Svenska Dagbladet wrote that he succeeded Svensson in the post in the year Svensson became party leader.

From 1978 to 1984 he was a columnist in the newspaper Samhällsgemenskap. In 1980 he was a member, and vice-chair, of the board for Line 3 in the advisory referendum on nuclear power. The government bill that fixed the ballot defined proposal 3 as a no to further expansion and a phase-out, within at most ten years, of the six reactors then in operation. The vote on 23 March 1980 gave Line 1 18.9 per cent, Line 2 39.1 per cent and Line 3 38.7 per cent, with a turnout of 75.7 per cent.

Party organisation and local politics

He then held successive posts on the party staff: information secretary from 1981 to 1985, political secretary from 1985 to 1988, and international secretary from 1988 to 1991. From 1983 to 1988 he chaired the KDS district in Stockholm County. The Riksdag biography lists membership of the party board from 1988. A 2013 Svenska Dagbladet profile stated instead that he joined the party board and its executive committee in 1973, and described him as one of the architects of the 1985 electoral cooperation with the Centre Party.

Under that cooperation KDS kept its own lists but stood under the shared designation Centern; Svensson entered the Riksdag as the first member elected for the party, and in 1987 the party renamed itself Kristdemokratiska Samhällspartiet. Statistics Sweden marks the Centre's 1985 Riksdag result, 12.4 per cent, as a cooperation with KDS and does not give a separate KDS share for that election. Standing alone in 1988, it received 2.9 per cent and no seats.

Odell's only pre-1991 service in the chamber was as a substitute. On 1 February 1988 the Speaker announced that the Centre parliamentary group had nominated him to replace Alf Svensson during Svensson's leave, and the chamber elected him alternate member of the foreign affairs, social affairs and agriculture committees. The Riksdag register records that substitute mandate as 1 February to 1 March 1988.

In Vallentuna, given as his place of residence, he sat on the municipal council from 1980 to 1991 and on the municipal executive board in 1983–1985 and again in 1989–1991. He was not a full member of the Riksdag until the 1991 election, when the party, standing on its own, won 7.1 per cent and entered parliament for the first time as a separate party.

Minister for Communications, 1991–1994

On 4 October 1991 Prime Minister Carl Bildt told the Riksdag that Mats Odell would head the Ministry of Communications in the cabinet of the Moderate Party, the Liberal People's Party, the Centre Party and the Christian Democrats. Elected for Stockholm County on 29 September 1991, he was on leave from that seat from 4 October 1991 to 6 October 1994. The Riksdag lists him as minister from 4 October 1991 to 7 October 1994, when the Bildt cabinet left office. The post covered posts, telecommunications, civil aviation and the railways run by Banverket.

Postal and telecommunications reform

A bill of 29 October 1992, with Odell as reporting minister, proposed repeal of the 1947 ordinance that gave Postverket the exclusive right to carry letters, with effect from the end of 1992. That spring the Riksdag had wanted the monopoly kept until a law protected regional and social service, while CityMail was already delivering pre-sorted business mail in Stockholm under disputed rules. The government sought a clear market signal and left Postverket's instructions on daily nationwide service and uniform charges in place until a new act. The Transport Committee backed the repeal; Social Democratic and Left Party members reserved themselves over the unfinished inquiry and service outside the cities. The Riksdag approved the bill, and the exclusive right ended on 1 January 1993.

The inquiry, SOU 1993:9, reported in January 1993. On 14 October 1993 the government submitted a bill signed by Bildt and Alf Svensson for the Communications Ministry; Odell had taken the draft to the Council on Legislation on 2 September. It asked the Riksdag to turn Postverket, on 1 February 1994, into the wholly state-owned Posten AB, and to pass a Postal Act on nationwide postal and counter service, secrecy and a duty to notify a supervisor, that duty applying from 1 March 1994. It also proposed a cap on private letter-rate increases and relief for non-profit associations when letter carriage became liable to value-added tax.

Proposition 1992/93:200 of 25 March 1993, signed by Bildt and Odell, proposed a Telecommunications Act, a Radio Communications Act and power to turn Televerket into a company. Operations, assets and debts would pass to Telia AB, wholly state-owned, and to Telia Mobiltel AB and Fastighets AB Telaris; licensing and supervision would move to a new agency, Telestyrelsen. The aim was efficient communications at the lowest socioeconomic cost, with telephony from every permanent home or workplace. Licences could require universal service and interconnection, and the government could cap telephony prices. The acts and the conversion were proposed for 1 July 1993. The Left Party moved rejection of corporatisation, arguing that a company would leave public access to official documents and the audit bureau and ombudsmen; the Transport Committee recommended that the motion be rejected.

Aviation and the Hallandsås tunnel

From 1 January 1992 domestic competition was allowed only between Scandinavian Airlines (SAS) and Linjeflyg, because Stockholm Arlanda Airport was judged unable to take a fully open market. A month later SAS bought a majority of Linjeflyg. On 29 April 1992 the government decided that from 1 July Swedish airlines could enter and leave routes freely and set their own prices and capacity. On 23 February 1993, answering the Social Democrat Georg Andersson on routes SAS planned to drop, Odell said the early effects were mostly positive: new links, lower fares and other carriers ready to step in. A 2001 review by the Civil Aviation Administration was cooler: new carriers entered, but SAS's share, about two thirds around 1995, later returned to about 75 per cent, and after 1992 private fares rose considerably faster in real terms than in the 1980s, with full fares substantially dearer on most routes.

On the West Coast Line the government decided in 1991 to fund a tunnel through Hallandsås, and work began in 1992 with Kraftbyggarna, a Vattenfall subsidiary. The open boring machine Hallborr was built for hard rock. At Båstad on 7 April 1993 county governor Anita Bråkenhielm named it, with Odell and Banverket's director-general Jan Brandborn present. By July it had been withdrawn after about 18 metres, far short of the kilometre then planned, because its grippers could not hold in the clay-bearing rock. Kraftbyggarna then drilled and blasted about three kilometres and left in May 1995 after a dispute with Banverket; the machine, built for 130 million kronor, was not used again.

The sealant failure came after Odell left office. Skanska, contractor from 1996, used 1,405 tonnes of Rhoca-Gil in 1997 against groundwater inflow. Unpolymerised acrylamide reached streams, fish died and cattle became ill, and Banverket and Skanska stopped work that October with about a third of the tunnel built. From autumn 2005 a later contractor used a shielded machine suited to the ground. The Swedish Transport Administration, Banverket's successor, has put spending from 1992 to 2003 at 2.1 billion kronor and the 2004–2015 works at an estimated 8.4 billion, 10.5 billion in 2008 prices. The twin 8.7-kilometre bores, meant to raise capacity from four trains an hour to 24, opened in December 2015.

Opposition and economic policy, 1994–2006

The centre-right cabinet of Carl Bildt lost the 1994 Swedish general election. The Swedish Social Democratic Party took 45.3 percent of the vote, and the Christian Democrats fell to 4.1 percent, just above the threshold for seats in the Riksdag. Odell, minister for communications since 1991, left office with that cabinet and sat again as an ordinary member for Stockholm County from 7 October 1994 until 5 October 2006. He was on leave from 6 October 2006, when he returned to government. Through the intervening Social Democratic years he was the Christian Democrats’ main parliamentary voice on taxes, the budget and monetary union.

Finance Committee

The Finance Committee prepares the Riksdag’s decisions on the central-government budget and the direction of economic policy, handles legislation on the financial markets and public procurement, and follows up the monetary policy of the Riksbank. Odell was a member from 10 October 1994 to 4 October 1998, deputy chair from 13 October 1998 to 29 September 2002, and a member again from 8 October 2002 to 2 October 2006. Alongside that brief he sat on the EU Committee in 1995 and from 1 February 2000 to 10 October 2006, with an intervening term as a substitute; the committee is where ministers anchor Sweden’s line before the European Council and the Council of the European Union. He was a member of the War Delegation—the body that can exercise the Riksdag’s powers if Sweden is at war or in danger of war—in 1998–2002 and 2002–2006, having already served in 1991–1994. From 2 December 1998 to 16 October 2006 he was also a member of the Riksbank General Council, which appoints the bank’s executive board and follows and evaluates its members.

Alternative budgets moved with leader Alf Svensson went to the Finance Committee and were rejected. The motion for 1998 proposed a taxed childcare allowance of 3,640 kronor a month per child, a tax cut of about 14 billion kronor by cutting social-security contributions two points, a partly means-tested child allowance, and more money than the government for municipalities and county councils. In October 1999 Svensson and Odell, introduced as the fiscal-policy spokesman and deputy chair of the committee, offered a higher basic allowance that also covered pensioners, lower expenditure ceilings, and faster sales of state companies to repay more debt.

On the single currency his public line shifted. A Dagens Nyheter article on 4 December 1997 carried his argument that Sweden should not join economic and monetary union without a referendum, and that the Moderates and the Liberals should be pressed on that condition. On 4 September 2003 he joined the other ten members of the Riksbank General Council in stating that Sweden ought to adopt the euro, citing expected gains in growth and a larger say inside the European system of central banks. In the referendum on 14 September, 55.9 percent voted no and 42.0 percent yes, with turnout at 82.6 percent.

Party offices in opposition

The Christian Democrats stayed a junior part of a divided non-socialist opposition. Their share of the Riksdag vote rose to 11.7 percent in 1998 and was 9.1 percent in 2002, while the Social Democrats remained in office. Svensson stepped down after 31 years, and an extraordinary party congress on 3 April 2004 elected Göran Hägglund leader unanimously. At the ordinary riksting on 5 July 2004, Hägglund was re-elected chair, Maria Larsson was re-elected first deputy chair, and Odell, listed from Täby, was newly elected second deputy chair, for a board term running to 2006.

He kept the economic brief as the four non-socialist parties formed a joint alternative. On 30 August 2004 Hägglund, Fredrik Reinfeldt of the Moderate Party, Lars Leijonborg of the Liberals and Maud Olofsson of the Centre Party announced the Alliance for Sweden. The economic work that began that autumn was reported in February 2006 in a document signed by Odell with Mikael Odenberg (Moderate), Karin Pilsäter (Liberal) and Roger Tiefensee (Centre). It proposed a general tax deduction on earned income, abolition of the wealth tax, tax reductions for household services, and a narrower role for the state through sales of state-owned companies. The same year Svenska Dagbladet still described him as the party’s economic spokesman when he urged an Alliance cut in petrol tax, repeating a Christian Democratic proposal to halve value-added tax on motor fuels and shift traffic-injury healthcare costs onto motor insurance.

Minister for local government, housing and financial markets, 2006–2010

Appointment and portfolio

On 6 October 2006, after the Alliance election victory, Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt appointed Mats Odell of the Christian Democrats a minister in the Ministry of Finance. Riksdag records list him as statsråd there from 6 October 2006 to 5 October 2010, on leave from his seat. The Government Offices yearbook gives the formal title as kommun- och finansmarknadsminister, minister for local government and financial markets.

Housing was not in the title, but it was in the job. In Göran Persson’s outgoing Social Democratic government the same post had been held by Sven-Erik Österberg from 2004 to 2006, while housing and planning sat with Mona Sahlin as samhällsbyggnadsminister in the Ministry of the Environment and Community Planning. Odell’s bills on subsidies, municipal housing companies and rent guarantees were presented from the Ministry of Finance. The portfolio also covered financial markets and state-owned companies; sales of state assets and policy during the financial crisis are treated in the following section.

After the 2010 election the brief was divided. On 5 October 2010 Peter Norman of the Moderate Party became minister for financial markets in succession to Odell, and Stefan Attefall of the Christian Democrats became minister for civil affairs and housing (civil- och bostadsminister).

Housing policy

The 2007 budget bill proposed ending the state interest subsidy (räntebidrag) for new building and renovation of rental and tenant-owner housing. A project had to have been started by 31 December 2006, and the application lodged by 30 June 2007. Grants already awarded were phased out from 2007 so that none would be calculated after 2011, with the pace set by the property’s value year: from 20 per cent in 2007 to zero in 2012 for newer buildings, and from 14 per cent to zero a year earlier for older ones. The interest subsidy was a condition of the investment grant and of the stimulus for smaller rental and student homes, so those supports closed on the same date. On 20 December 2006 the Riksdag approved the phase-out by 153 votes to 143, against a reservation from the Social Democrats, the Left Party and the Green Party, and rejected motions to keep the rental investment grant by 154 to 143.

Builders started work before the cutoff. The Institute for Language and Folklore entered Odellplatta on its 2006 list of new words: a foundation slab poured in haste before the subsidy rules changed, named for Odell. The entry quotes Sydsvenska Dagbladet of 31 October 2006, which likened the slabs to the Danellgropar of the early 1990s, when an excavated hole could count as a start under the old rules; this time the slab had to be cast. Göteborgs-Posten later reported that at least 800 slabs were poured in Västra Götaland and that some were demolished after being sited wrongly, and recalled that in autumn 1992 foundations for 12,000 apartments — the Danellgropar, after the investigator Georg Danell — had been dug to keep higher subsidies. In April 2007 Dagens Nyheter reported that dropped plans covered about 11,000 rental apartments, nearly two years of production.

Proposition 2006/07:61 of 15 March 2007 repealed, from the end of June 2007, the requirement in the 2002 Act on Public Housing Companies that a county administrative board permit transfers of municipal housing companies and sales of their rental property. That rule, introduced under the previous government and known as stopplagen, had constrained sales and conversions to tenant-owner associations. The bill also dropped a duty to inform tenants before a sale, kept the cap on dividends from municipal housing companies, and let municipalities offer rent guarantees; 100 million kronor had been reserved for such support in the 2007 budget. The government called the permit a disproportionate limit on municipal self-government. Odell told Svenska Dagbladet that the law should not forbid a conversion where there was local agreement. The Swedish Union of Tenants replied that the rule had worked, that refusals were concentrated in Stockholm, and that it protected the use-value rent system; the government cited the high rate of approvals as evidence that the control was unnecessary. Teres Lindberg, Social Democratic vice-chair of Svenska Bostäder, said Stockholm lacked rentals rather than tenant-owned flats, and that conversions would narrow that mix.

Municipal affairs

The local-government side covered municipal and county-council (landsting) finances and the equalisation of their resources. Income equalisation offsets differences in tax base, and cost equalisation offsets structural differences such as age, social composition and geography. On 25 September 2008 the government, through the Ministry of Finance, instructed a parliamentary committee (Dir. 2008:110) to report by 30 April 2011 on whether income equalisation held back growth and employment, how tax shifts and the municipal property fee should be treated, how cost equalisation could be simplified, and whether the structural grant should be changed or abolished. The committee was also to evaluate cost-equalisation changes that took effect in 2008, after the 2007 spring fiscal bill, and to consider moving some earmarked grants into the general grant.

State asset sales and the financial crisis

Company sales

On 14 December 2006 Enterprise Minister Maud Olofsson and Mats Odell, then minister for financial markets, said the government would reduce its stakes in Nordea, OMX, SBAB, TeliaSonera, Vasakronan and V&S Vin & Sprit, and that Odell would run the sales. The 2007 budget aimed at sales corresponding to 150 billion kronor over three years; the Swedish National Audit Office put expected proceeds from the six companies at about 200 billion kronor, and proposition 2006/07:57, sent to the Riksdag in March 2007, sought authority to sell.

In May 2007 the state sold 8 percent of Telia Company, then TeliaSonera: 359.2 million shares at 50 kronor, about 18 billion kronor, cutting the holding from 45.3 percent to 37.3 percent. Deutsche Bank and UBS advised, and Odell approved Carnegie Investment Bank as a selling agent aimed mainly at Nordic institutions.

On 31 January 2008 the government instructed Odell to accept Borse Dubai’s offer for the state’s 6.6 percent of OMX, after the board recommended the bid in view of a later transfer to Nasdaq and after advice from Lazard on price and on the Swedish capital market. Odell said the state would receive 2.1 billion kronor, more than 1 billion of it a capital gain.

On 31 March 2008 Pernod Ricard won the auction for Vin & Sprit, maker of Absolut Vodka, at 5.63 billion euros (8.87 billion dollars), ahead of Fortune Brands, Bacardi and EQT. The price excluded a 10 percent stake in Beam Global Spirits & Wine, which the state said it would sell separately. Odell said the price was very good for the public finances and that production and marketing would continue in Sweden and the Nordic region.

On 3 July 2008 the government sold Vasakronan, through parent Civitas Holding, to AP Fastigheter at a property value of 41.1 billion kronor. The buyer assumed 16.5 billion kronor of net debt and other commitments, the equity price was 24.6 billion kronor including interest, and the proceeds were to reduce the national debt. Odell said the bid was the higher of two final offers.

Markets during the financial crisis

Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt and Odell signed the October 2008 bill on support for the financial system.

On 6 October 2008 Odell and Finance Minister Anders Borg said the deposit guarantee would rise from 250,000 to 500,000 kronor and cover more than transaction accounts, the first increase since 1996. Odell said the aim was clearer cover and household confidence; Borg said the 2008 financial crisis was nearing Sweden but that stability remained satisfactory.

On 23 October the government proposed letting itself, or an authority it named, support Swedish credit institutions at short notice, only against a risk of serious disruption and without a statutory cap, and sought 15 billion kronor in 2008 for a stability fund. The Finance Committee recommended approval and the chamber agreed.

The Swedish National Debt Office was the support authority under the new act. At 8 a.m. on 10 November 2008 the government authorised it to lend so Carnegie could repay liquidity support from Sveriges Riksbank if the Financial Supervisory Authority revoked Carnegie’s licence, and to dispose of shares taken as security. The loan was 2.4 billion kronor, equal to the Riksbank credit already drawn, with an option to 5 billion. After the supervisor announced the revocation, the Debt Office enforced a pledge over Carnegie and Max Matthiessen, and the supervisor then substituted a warning because the Debt Office had taken control.

Audits and constitutional scrutiny

On 25 May 2007 the National Audit Office reported that the government had not carried out the review of arguments for and against state ownership of the six companies promised in the budget bill. It judged that preparation of the sales bill missed the Instrument of Government’s requirements, that the Riksdag lacked a comprehensive basis, and that the Ministry of Enterprise’s files fell short of standards set by the Committee on the Constitution.

Its June 2008 audit of the TeliaSonera placing called the price reasonable for a large block sold quickly with limited marketing, but said the 8.67 percent discount to the previous close was relatively high beside comparable deals the banks had shown the government. At the press conference Odell had put the discount at 2 percent against the price when the book closed. They said a lower discount might have followed had the banks been instructed to seek one and had officials been more active; direct bank costs were a little over 13 million kronor.

The June 2009 audit found the Vin & Sprit auction, excluding the Beam shares, well run and financially successful. No negotiated Beam price was reached, an independent valuer set it under the shareholder agreement, and the resulting capital loss and the effect on the national debt were omitted from the budget bill. The March 2010 audit found the Vasakronan sale lawful and in several respects in line with market practice, but said earlier preparation might have allowed completion in somewhat better market conditions.

In September 2007 the Social Democrat Kristina Zakrisson asked the Committee on the Constitution to examine Odell’s use of the investment banks to hire public-relations firms, arguing that this kept the terms outside ordinary procurement scrutiny and excluded agencies on government framework contracts. In its 2007/08 review the majority held that this was not a circumvention of the procurement law, because the consultants’ work could be treated as part of the financial services and required Government Offices approval. The committee said the bank contracts, though awarded under exemptions that did not require advertising, had still been chosen competitively; for Vin & Sprit, Morgan Stanley used Hallvarsson & Halvarsson with Government Offices approval. Dagens Media reported the outcome as a clearance and named Kreab and Prime among the agencies used.

The 2012 leadership contest and later years in the Riksdag

Challenge to Göran Hägglund

After the 2010 election Odell left the cabinet. On 7 October 2010 the Christian Democrats' parliamentary group made him its leader in the Riksdag, succeeding Stefan Attefall, who had become minister for public administration and housing. He had said he would seek the party leadership only if Göran Hägglund stepped down. On 2 October 2011 he changed that position, and at a press conference in the Riksdag the next day he announced an open challenge.

He called it the party's worst crisis since its founding. At each election, he said, the Christian Democrats had lost 17 to 25 percent of their previous vote, and no clear strategy had been offered to stop the fall. He asked for a fresh start, with political content behind the slogans, a tougher line and a harder negotiating style inside the Alliance, and he argued that a change of leader had to come then rather than in 2013, when a successor would have only about a year before facing the voters. He denied bitterness at being replaced as a minister after 2010 by Attefall, and said that although he shared responsibility as a member of the presidium, he had "drawn the shortest straw" when views differed.

Hägglund answered that more than 90 percent of the 2006 programme had been carried out, a record he said he was proud of, and that he was convinced his own support was broad and strong. What mattered, he said, was that after the party's municipal days and the extra congress in January the leadership should feel it had the party's full backing.

The vote was held at an extra riksting in Västerås on 28 January 2012. Of 286 delegates, 198 voted for Hägglund and 88 for Odell, who until then had been second deputy chair. Odell said members wanted clearer politics, sharper communication and a more present leadership, and pride in the Christian foundation followed by reconciliation; if elected, he would offer Hägglund one of three Alliance ministerial posts. Hägglund, partly self-critical about the need to be tougher and clearer, said afterwards that the history would be written together. He promised more travel and a stronger role for district chairs, while noting that a leader would of course have wanted every vote. Odell embraced him, said he had aimed to win but was prepared for the result, and offered to continue as a member, committee chair and group leader. Dagens Nyheter described the task as uniting a divided party whose opinion figures were below the four-percent electoral threshold.

He did not keep the group leadership. On 20 February 2012 he resigned before a meeting at which the group was to consider an annual meeting that could have removed him. He told SVT that, after speaking himself with every Christian Democratic member, he would not face further personal ballots: leaving was a consequence of a challenge he did not regret, not a failure. On a Sifo poll at 3.8 percent, back under the threshold, he said support had been 4.2 percent during the contest and that the fight had not helped with voters. Penilla Gunther called the resignation necessary, because Odell could not stay among the leader's closest colleagues after withholding confidence in him, and she put his support in the group at about a third. The next day the group elected Emma Henriksson as its leader.

Committee chair and the 2014 election

The Riksdag register lists Odell as chair of the Committee on Industry and Trade from 12 October 2010, after the Christian Democrats nominated him and the other parties accepted, until 3 October 2012. A planned operation, which press secretary Fredrik Hardt said was not serious, was to keep him away from 4 October. The register shows his seat on leave from 15 October 2012 to 1 January 2013, and records him only as a committee member from 4 October 2012 to 1 January 2013. The Moderate Jessica Polfjärd held the chair temporarily—ordinary practice, Hardt said, for the first elected member—and Maria Fälth, a municipal commissioner in Upplands Väsby, sat in Odell's place. He resumed the chair on 2 January 2013.

On 17 October 2013 Odell, then 66, said he would not stand in the 2014 election. He told Svenska Dagbladet that it was a very good moment to pass the baton and to do something other than politics full time, and that he had not decided what would follow, although some offers had come in. He remained a member, and committee chair, until the parliamentary term ended on 29 September 2014. In that year's Riksdag election the Christian Democrats received 4.57 percent of the vote.

Later public roles

Riksbank General Council

Odell left the Riksdag on 29 September 2014. On 11 October 2022 the chamber elected him again to the General Council of the Riksbank (Riksbanksfullmäktige), approving the nominating committee's list of eleven ordinary members. The Riksbank's record of that decision lists him as the Christian Democrats' member. The parliamentary register gives the term as 11 October 2022 to 13 October 2026. He had sat on the council before, from 2 December 1998 to 14 October 2002 and from 15 October 2002 to 16 October 2006, while a member of parliament and before he returned to government.

Under Chapter 9, Section 16, of the Instrument of Government, the Riksbank has eleven councillors elected by the Riksdag, and an executive board appointed by the council leads the bank. The Riksbank describes the council as appointing the executive board and setting its pay and other terms of employment; deciding how the bank's profit is allocated; adopting the council's rules of procedure; and choosing the motifs on banknotes and coins. The council also follows the bank's activities. Its chair and deputy chair may attend executive-board meetings but, so as not to compromise the bank's independence, may not make proposals or take decisions there. An audit function, using an authorised auditor, reviews how the executive-board members do their work. The council reports its observations to the Riksdag's Finance Committee and informs the committee of matters of greater importance. It meets about ten times a year; meetings are not public, although agendas and minutes are published. The Sveriges Riksbank Act provides that the executive board has five members, appointed for five or six years after an application procedure, one of them as governor. The council chooses its own chair and deputy chair, and its mandate follows the Riksdag's.

On 13 October 2026 the Riksdag elected a council for 2026–2030. Odell was not among the eleven ordinary members; the Christian Democratic place went to Christian Carlsson. The new council was to choose its chair and deputy chair on 23 October 2026.

Positions after leaving daily politics

In December 2014 the public-relations firm Diplomat Communications added Odell and the former Social Democratic leader Mona Sahlin to a new advisory group that already included the former Liberal leader Lars Leijonborg. Svenska Dagbladet, reporting Dagens industri, wrote that the group would meet a few times a year on questions "at the boundary between politics and business," for an annual fee of 75,000 kronor. Dagens Media described it as an advisory board meant to broaden the firm's advice. The same month RenFuel AB, which was developing a process for turning forestry lignin into a bio-oil, announced that Odell had joined its board.

On 27 April 2017, for his 70th birthday, the Christian newspaper Dagen ran an "11 questions" interview under the headline "Jag tror att jag är färdig med politiken" ("I think I am finished with politics"). In June 2021 he commented on a Social Democratic proposal for a ceiling on the investment savings account (investeringssparkonto, ISK), a standard-taxed account introduced in 2012 from a proposal he had prepared as minister for financial markets. He told Expressen that a cap was "unfortunate," and that "taking a rough cut just to have something in the election campaign is to invite division." Changes, he said, should be anchored broadly so that the account did not become a campaign issue; making a cutback an election theme would create insecurity for savers. Expressen quoted Finance Minister Magdalena Andersson as saying a ceiling would not affect most holders, and reported calculations that the account had cost the state billions of kronor in forgone tax.

Family enterprise and personal life

The care-company sale

Odell's Riksdag biography, supplied by him, lists self-employment in care from 1970. The business was a family company. In October 2006 he told Svenska Dagbladet that his parents had started it in 1959, that he and his wife together held one third, and that they had lived in the middle of the operation. The paper later reported that his mother, Greta Odell-Carlsson, took over the Vallbostrand group home in Vallentuna in the 1950s, and that in the late 1990s it and three other homes were brought into Bellstasund Omsorger, with Odell a co-owner and chair.

Bellstasund Omsorger provided, through subsidiaries, housing and daily activities under the LSS disability-support law for adults with intellectual disabilities or acquired brain injury; turnover was reported at about 90 million kronor. When Odell, a Christian Democrat, became minister in 2006 he left the board but kept the holding. He said ministry lawyers had found no obstacle, and that he would stand aside from any matter with the slightest hint of a conflict. Social Democrat Hans Hoff asked the Constitutional Committee to examine the shares. In its 2006/07 review the committee said that, with his responsibilities for municipalities, county administrative boards and the state administration, interests in care companies were more sensitive than in a 1992/93 review of the same homes, and that conflict-of-interest rules had to be followed.

In spring 2007 Odell and his sister's family put Bellstasund up for sale while he was preparing sales of state-owned companies. A Finance Ministry memorandum said the private-equity fund Valedo Partners Fund I, then Cre Val Partners, was introduced by the owners of Solhaga by, and that the care subsidiaries were sold in November 2007 to Solhaga By Holding AB. On 9 November 2007 he sold his Bellstasund shares to Bällstaudde Förvaltning, owned by some of the former shareholders. Dagens industri, as reported by Svenska Dagbladet, Aftonbladet and Expressen, put the family's profit at 72 million kronor, paid as a dividend into Bällstaudde.

Dagens industri reported that the Third and Sixth AP funds, within Odell's responsibility for the financial markets, together owned 45 percent of Valedo. He told the paper that he had known the AP funds were large investors, that he had nothing to hide, and that the purchase was a good investment for the funds; he also said he had no view of who had originally invested in Valedo. The memorandum recorded that he had been told those funds had no influence over Valedo's investments, and that neither the government nor he could direct AP-fund placements, which statute places outside the government's disposal.

In March 2009 Peter Hultqvist asked the committee whether the sale fitted Chapter 6, Section 9 of the Instrument of Government, which bars a minister from activity that can undermine confidence. The complaint named the Second and Sixth AP funds as having supplied 45 percent of Valedo's original capital, and also cited chair Hans Larsson's role at Handelsbanken. The committee's account identified the Third and Sixth funds, and recorded that Handelsbanken had not advised on the state sales Odell handled and that he had not known Larsson. He maintained that no conflict had arisen. The review, the committee concluded, called for no statement.

Family and residence

The Riksdag biography names his parents as the pastor Hans Johan Algot Carlsson and the teacher Hanna Margareta Odell, and gives Vallentuna as his place of residence. His wife shared the one-third holding, which he described as part of the family rather than an ordinary shareholding. In 2011 he told Aftonbladet that he had belonged since the 1970s to the Pentecostal congregation in Vallentuna, that he believed in a God who had taken a decisive part in the world, and that he did not try to impose that belief on others.