The case of Glitnir lending money to children aged 1-17 for shares in BYR Savings & Loans is so filthy it is hard to grasp. The bank, with current CEO Birna Einarsdottir as a top manager allowed the parents of ten children to borrow up to 24 million ISK in their name. Amid public outcry over the [...]

Iceland is currently in a state of shock. The nation has been hit with one bad news after another since the economic collapse last year. The dust has not settled, with no one made responsible and few solutions to Iceland‘s problems offered by its leadership. Fingers are still being pointed and anger and resentment is [...]

One should think that transparancy is of utmost importance for any Icelandic government since the heyday of the behind-closed-doors governance of the Independence Party and the Progressive Party. Questions remain regarding the true ownership of Magma Energy, which has now gotten its hands on valuable energy resources through a game of remiscent of previous governments. Little [...]

How is Steingrimur J. Sigfusson going to tackle this one? Glitnir/Islandsbanki is probably about to relieve former CEO Bjarni Armannsson of a debt of 800 million ISK, which is from a loan his own shelf-company Imagine got from the bank to purchase 12% of shares in the Norwegian business Glitnir Property Holding. Bjarni who walked out [...]

“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 [...]

Has anyone thought of this yet? In 2004, Kaupthing brought the first mortgages by a commercial bank to the Icelandic market. Glitnir and Landsbanki soon followed, as did the Savings&Loans and some smaller financial institutions. In the first couple of weeks after Kaupthing’s announcement, Glitnir and Landsbankinn were practically in shock. A customer calling his commercial bank [...]

As noted before it seems like the best job in the world today is to be on the solvency committee of an Icelandic bank. At Glitnir, Arni Tomasson is busy wondering how to get failing businesses into the “right hands”. Arni was the manager of Bunadarbankinn which lent Bjorgolfur & son the money to buy Landsbankinn [...]

Kaupthing’s leaked documents are welcome proof of what people have been saying since last autumn, and what some experts warned for years. The Icelandic banks were controlled by an elite who raked in as much money as possible for themselves, through loans with worthless or no collateral and bonus payments and dividends that were based on [...]

The latest of Larus Welding is that he is apparantly heading off to Harvard to do a master’s degree. His application to the university must be quite a read. CEO of Landsbankinn, UK when IceSave was being implemented, then CEO of Glitnir who appeared on national television days before his bank was taken over by the state [...]

First they tried to stop Wikileaks from publishing this and then the solvency committee of Kaupthing managed to get a ruling against the State Broadcasting News from talking about the findings. Absolutely useless, the information is already everywhere and only confirms what people have been asking, yes Kaupthing like the other Icelandic banks was used as [...]