The Dutch company Avens BV and Landsbanki
Iceland’s debt just got worse.
Nothing new in that sense, but it hits the public very hard. And to think that the Dutch government actually tried to stop Iceland-s application to the EU today, but they did not succeed. The debt got higher, and the amount is 100 billion ISK.
This happened when Landsbanki in the Netherlands started the Dutch company Avens B.V. The financial exploits of that company were used by Landsbanki as collateral given to the Europien Central bank.
The reason for the starting of the company Avens B.V was that Landsbanki was suffering from shortage of Euros. Landsbanki started the company, bought Icelandic government debentures and issued another debenture in Euros by Avens B.V. That bond was then given to the European Central bank.
This gave Landsbanki access to Euros via indirect purchase, and when the shortage was starting to hurt the bank, Sigurjón Árnason, the creator of Icesave came up with this brilliant plan on how to con the ECB and everyone else.
610 billion ISK is now owned by foreigners and one sixth of that is because of Avens. The bankruptcy estate of old Landsbanki is working successfully with the ECB trying to solve this. The ECB is not as as impatient as the Dutch and the British governments who are demanding, or should we say giving ultimatums and using political and economical threat to make the state of Iceland and thus the general taxpayer agree to a deal they themselves would never agree to.
This Avens adventure is perhaps one of the major factors in the continuing weakening of the Icelandic Krona, and the reason for the currency restrictions not working.
Sigurjón Árnason the ex Landsbanki CEO and the author of this Avens mess, and the infamous Icesave scam is now a lecturer at the Reykjavik University teaching first years BS students all about financial engineering. The University is trying to improve its image. More on that issue later….but what the hell are they thinking.
Popularity: 11% [?]
It has been nine and a half months. Leaving aside the British, as that can be an emotive topic, the Dutch have been very patient considering they had a MoU for 6.7% back in Oct.
Imagine what they must have thought when it became apparent that they were going to have to block the IMF loan because Iceland was looking like it wasn’t even going to honour the Dutch portion of the guarantee.
BTW, thanks for running such an interesting site. I loved your point about the ex-CEO of Glitnir changing his name and enrolling in school again. You can’t make this stuff up
.
Iceland is going to pay, that has never been the problem. The way the deal is, that is a problem. Iceland should not have to pay more then the EU regulations say. We should not give our soverign rights away for this.
If the Dutch want to compare the IMF emergency loan to Iceland with Icesave, then they are completely mad.
It’s two different things. And to use emergency aid as leverage to gain a deal that is so unfair, that nobody in their right mind would agree to it, is not just wrong, its probably illegal.
Iceland will pay for the fraud of a few individuals. The general public is going back 20 years, going into poverty just to satisfy some arrogant nations that have a looong history of raping and pillaging nations as colonialists. They obviously have not let go of their old ways.
“Financial engineering” is just the code phrase for “lying,cheating and stealing …legally”. The next thing you know they will have a guy named Guido teaching a course about “Making a competitor an offer he can´t refuse”. What relative of Sigurjón Árnason has close ties to this school and was able to see that he got employed there? Hmmmm…
I will do a entry about the whole university system in Iceland shortly.
Reykjavik University has been very involved with the business life. The article will be honest, and in some ways a brutal criticism on the school.
[...] View original post here: The Dutch company Avens BV and Landsbanki [...]
Excellent Blog, I just identified this post despite the fact that looking through Blogarama I believe that you and I could have been buddies in the previous life – the posts that I’ve read so far are really attractiveness to me and also to my sense of tatse! Anyway, chichat aside, it seems that your RSS does not seem to perform in my browser (Ive just installed Google chrome) are you in a position to tell me how I can fix it?