Glitnir

"That is not altogether unreasonable: Landsbanki, Kaupthing and Glitnir rank in the world’s top ten biggest banking bankruptcies, and when combined as one big Icelandic banking collapse would rank as the third-largest corporate collapse in history. Foreign banking institutions alone were said to have lost €30 billion in the crisis. And, at the time of the 2008 crash, I reckon I was the largest personal investor in Iceland’s economy. In hindsight, I should have never put so much money at risk in Iceland."

"When I wanted to radically change Straumur to de-risk it and bring in professional management from abroad, I got into a major debate with two fellow shareholders and board members who in different ways were products of the kind of false thinking prevalent in Iceland at the time. One of them had an old Icelandic money background and the other had inherited a fishing business. Thordur Mar Johannesson, Straumur’s CEO, had advised both of them to leverage up their family companies through the bank. To them, he was incredibly smart but they didn’t have a clue about what they were doing. When I said: ‘We have got to change management,’ they said: ‘Why? This guy is brilliant.’ I replied: ‘He’s brilliant now but the amount of risk we have in the company by always betting on local bank shares rising is crazy. We could go pop just like that.’ He had built up a large position in Glitnir, managed to sell it profitably and now wanted to do the same again with Kaupthing shares. It was a one trick show and lacked any vision to build a diversified business. They didn’t see the danger signs. They had maybe €100 million to their name but it was all done through Johannesson, who had leveraged them up and put them into various businesses and instruments. They were sky high on monopoly money and just wanted to take more and more turns. They had no sense that this was not a game."