After the state announced that it was going to take over 75% of Glitnir it was clear that Stodir/FL Group, the largest owner of the bank would go under. It had been clear for some time that Baugur, Stodir/FL Group’s owner was in a bad shape financially. This created an immense problem for two funds owned by Glitnir, Fund 1 and Fund 9, as their more than 50% of their total assets were in Baugur and Stodir/FL Group.
At a board meeting at Glitnir it was decided that the bank would buy all the Stodir/FL Group shares from the funds. Larus Welding, CEO says in the report that he had met with Geir Haarde and Arni Mathiesen about this, as it was known that the state would becoming an owner of the bank at the time.
In a phone call with Geir, “Geir had said that this was a difficult issue but indicated, “yes, I suppose this has to be done”. Arni had not objected. The shares were bought for 10.7 billion ISK.
Larus also says that “Tryggvi Thor Herbertsson had sat with us earlier in the day and so had Illugi Gunnarsson, a board-member in these funds. Illugi emphasized strongly that this should be solved, so this was approved by the board and done.”
Geir said to the committee that he thought Larus was introducing the issue to himself and Arni but not looking for approval or denial, and to examine if they had any objections. Geir admits that “If we had said no we don’t want this at all, then I suppose they would have though this over.”
A few days earlier, the management of Glitnir bought 33 billions ISK worth of shares from the fund. Three days after, the resolution committee took over.
This is from the report, translated from Vb.is.
I urge you to read this from one year ago and ask yourself how long can somebody like Illugi hide within Althing without answering for his part in this and blatantly misleading voters?
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Dadi
1 year ago
Amazingly Illugi resigned two hours after this was published. Albeit only temporarily, not because he considers himself to have done wrong but to “clear his good name”, like Bjorgvin G. Sigurdsson.
I did not know I had such pull within the Independence Party