Word: landsbanki
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...conflict last week when President Olafur Grimsson refused to sign a bill requiring his country to repay the $5 billion that's owed to the British and Dutch citizens who deposited their savings in an online Icelandic bank that collapsed in 2008. Icesave, a subsidiary of the Icelandic bank Landsbanki, offered eye-popping interest rates of up to 15% to foreigners before the crash. (See pictures of the global financial crisis...
...aftermath. Critics say Iceland has only itself to blame: the sparsely populated island had a mainly fish-based economy until the early 2000s, when it deregulated its banks and tried to reinvent itself as a global financial power - with disastrous results. Banks such as Landsbanki moved aggressively into European markets and racked up incredible debts - partially because of poor government oversight - which they were then unable to refinance...
...However, the government would almost certainly need to renegotiate its $6.3 billion agreement to reimburse the Dutch and British who had accounts with Icesave, the internet arm of the now-defunct Landsbanki, which collapsed last October. The deal was a condition of the IMF bailout, and Iceland has 15 years to pay it back. But the sums total almost half the country's annual output and could jeopardize any recovery...
...fishing industry shrunk from 16 percent to 6 percent of GDP between 1986 and 2006. Banking, insurance, and property, meanwhile, came to represent 26 percent of GDP by 2006. At the core of this transformation was the spectacular growth of Iceland’s three main banks, Glitnir, Landsbanki, and Kaupthing, all of which grew at impressive rates following their deregulation in 2000. Much of the borrowing for these banks and Icelandic society more generally came from the continent, where rates were especially low. The money would then be converted into the local currency, the krona, and invested...
...something of a surprise to some local councils. There have been warnings since the beginning of the year that all was not well with Iceland's banks. As early as Jan. 30, credit-ratings agency Moody's Investors Service said it was placing on review for possible downgrade Landsbanki, Kaupthing and Glitnir, another Icelandic bank. It did indeed downgrade all three a month later. In July, Kitty Ussher, then Economic Secretary to the Treasury and now a minister in the Department for Work and Pensions, was quizzed by an influential House of Commons committee after newspapers reported that the Icelandic...