“Yes, yes, we just got the go-ahead from the banks to move this onto another social security number. They were in on it,” said Jakob Valgeir Flosason, the name behind Stim ehf. (a shelf company used by Glitnir to keep the price of its stock artificially up) when talking about his business leaving behind debts and liabilities with the old social security number and forming a new company where they moved assets such as trawlers and the most valuable asset of all, fishing quota.
Magnus Kristinsson is an Independence Party-made billionaire from Vestmannaeyjar who used the assets from his fishing business to borrow heavily to invest in the Toyota dealership in Iceland, the Domino’s pizza franchise, investment funds and other businesses related ot his core business of fishing. Magnus is also one of the main lunatics who have advocated for an undersea tunnel to be made from mainland Iceland to the Vestmannaeyjar islands where he lives (pop. 4.000) and the strongest hand behind shamed local MP Arni Johnsen. Magnus is now supposed to be granted a 50 billion ISK write off at Landsbankinn, as his investments have been typically Icelandic, over the top. But of course they will not pursue his fishing quota.
All of this is done with the blessing of the banks’ solvency committees, in the name of “reorganization”. Basically it means that some people in Iceland can continually run their businesses into the ground as long as they have friends in the banks that allow them to “reorganize”. It is terrible for creditors, namely the banks and their owners (formerly shareholders, now the state) but brilliant for the lucky business geniuses who can siphon out cash from the operation for themselves or use it as collateral against loans used to invest more.
The only logical explanation behind people like Jakob Valgeir and Magnus not losing their company must be that the law sees the relationship between the men and their yet uncaught fish as something sacred, like a parent’s and child’s. And therefore they are leaving their fish alone.
Related posts:
Carl Mosconi
2 years ago
It´s no wonder that in a recent survey of large European financial institutions, 90 percent said they were unlikely to put money into Iceland ever again.
Leave The Fish Alone | iceland today
2 years ago
[...] Original post: Leave The Fish Alone [...]
Twitter Trackbacks for Leave The Fish Alone [economicdisasterarea.com] on Topsy.com
2 years ago
[...] Leave The Fish Alone http://www.economicdisasterarea.com/index.php/features/leave-the-fish-alone – view page – cached #RSS 2.0 Economic Disaster Area » Leave The Fish Alone Comments Feed Economic Disaster Area One day later Don’t Bank On The Isle Of Man Apology Accepted But Let’s Talk About This Bonus System Thing — From the page [...]