With hindsight, the episode looks all the more uncomfortable because of Kaupthing’s complex relationship with Tchenguiz. He was not just its largest customer but also led a series of private equity-style joint-venture deals in which Kaupthing co-invested its own money. Moreover, in early 2007 he became a major investor and board member in Exista, an [...]

  How did the banks of a country the size of a single London suburb manage to burn through so many billions? And what is being done to recover assets for the creditors of the banks? Only a few months ago many believed that Iceland was just another victim of the global financial crisis. In [...]

The retail group, which owned stakes in a number of major British chains, from House of Fraser to Hamleys, transferred a ski chalet in France, two properties in London and a property in Denmark to Mr Johannesson’s investment company, Gaumur, last autumn. Erlendur Gislason, of Logos, the joint administrator of Baugur, said he was looking [...]

The father/son team of Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson and Bjorgolfur Thor are personally responsible for a 5 billion ISK loan from Kaupthing. The loan was granted by Bunadarbankinn (later Kaupthing) to buy Landsbankinn from the state during the privatization in 2003. Vb.is reported on the loan which was originally 11 billion ISK and it is said to [...]

  Neoliberal Iceland was run as a secret conspiracy worthy of a James Bond screenplay: it was exchanged for gambling money in a plot involving Russian oligarchs, offshore accounts in the Caribbean, and luxury yachts no less kitschy than your average dictators’ – not to mention Elton John, Tina Turner and Duran Duran entertaining in [...]

The relevation of Morgunbladid that the facilitator of FL Group’s 30 million ISK donation to the Independent Party, then Health Minister Gudlaugur Thor Thordarson is quite interesting on many levels. FL Group tried to save its own skin by acquiring a 20 year exclusive contract with Reykjavik Energy that would bring the intellectual rights of [...]

The biggest story this week was the relevation that the Independence Party accepted two enormous donations from FL Group and Landsbankinn in 2006. At the same time, Geir Haarde was behind a bill in parliament that would limit individual donations to political parties to 300.000 ISK. The FL Group donation of 30 million ISK was [...]

Islandsbanki, formerly Glitnir were the first to confuse themselves with a being a public bank when they announced that they were offering those with currency loans solutions the day before the government announced such initiatives. Landsbankinn is now running an ad campaign offering home-loans free of price-indexation, a novelty that Icelandic households have been crying [...]

I am relaunching the site and hope you will bear with me for a couple of days while I get my head around this. The reason is that I want to be able to distinguish between my own writing and that of others, incorporate video and photos in a better way. I spent last week [...]

Egill Helgason’s interview with economist Gunnar Tomasson in English at Mises.org. Very insightful and educational. Egill: Does this mean that generations of students have been brought up on nonsense ideology? For this is ideology, of course. Gunnar: Yes, nonsensical ideology. The root of the problem goes back to a point made in the mid-19th century by [...]