Kristin

"The effect of the crash on my personal life was harder to ignore. Kristin had voiced her fears about Iceland, and being more risk-averse than me was shocked that bank shares had turned out to be the riskiest assets of all. She, like everyone else, was blown away by the speed of what happened at first, but then she became angry. ‘I knew this would happen,’ she would say. ‘I knew you were doing everything too fast.’ We argued a lot in 2009 when I was trying to deal with the fallout. She was irritated that I hadn’t seen the collapse and she found it tough to deal with, especially when she read bad things about me in the media. I have always kept my work and private lives separate. But this was something extraordinary. Because of my work, her world was crumbling, and many of her best friends in the banking sector lost their jobs."

"One element was my relationship with Kristin. During the boom years, she mainly stayed in London while I was travelling the world on business. We had our first child in 2005, at the peak of my professional life, and it was a tough time: she wanted to settle down while I was buying a jet and a yacht and buzzing around the world. It was not a good time for our relationship and we separated in 2006 for some months, later getting back together. This doesn’t reflect well on me, but I guess I came late to fatherhood and needed time to adjust to the idea."

"Kristin did have a few conditions, which were non-negotiable. She said that this was one of the most special days of any woman’s life and that she wanted to bring her hair-dresser to make sure she was looking her best and, being a film producer, she also recognised the importance of having a great photographer to record this occasion, especially since none of our family would be there and pictures were crucial to sharing the moment with them."

"On 26 September 2011, at a meeting with the Watson executives in my office, I extrapolated the numbers and hypothesised about what the stock price of a Watson–Actavis combination could be over one-, two- and three-year frameworks. It was a persuasive argument and the main players all now agree that this was the point at which we all set ourselves on a mission to finish it one way or another. As it turned out, I had other matters to think about. The meeting was abruptly cut short when Kristin called to say she was going into labour prematurely and needed help immediately. I ran straight out of the meeting, shouting at my PA to call an ambulance to my home, and drove myself home like a madman, fearful for Kristin and our unborn child. Mercifully, a few hours later Kristin successfully gave birth to our little girl in an emergency procedure. I, however, still had another deal to deliver."

"It was a great moment for me, and I honestly felt that I had hit upon a way to look upon the uncertainties of the time in a positive way, and hopefully I managed to inspire a few young people in the process. Later that day I went with Kristin to a late lunch to celebrate the event, and we were sitting in a nice hotel restaurant on a fine spring day in Manhattan when I got a call from my office in London. My two colleagues were on speakerphone and proceeded to summarise for me the meetings that had taken place with Deutsche Bank in London that day, which were the culmination of very lengthy and stormy confrontations over the previous eight weeks. It was very bad news, and I felt as though I had been doused with a bucket of iced water. Deutsche Bank, my biggest creditor as a result of its loans to Actavis, had finally spelled out its terms. They were completely unacceptable. The scale of my Actavis problem finally dawned on me."

"In 2008, people in Iceland believed they were destined for something, that it was time for ‘God’s frozen people’, as a former Icelandic prime minister, David Oddsson, had once referred to them, to take their place. But Iceland was trying to punch way above its weight without regard to the fundamentals. It was like when Iceland’s national handball team won silver in the Beijing Olympics in 2008. ‘Iceland is not a small country. It’s the “biggestest” country in the world,’ exclaimed the president’s wife at that time. I shared in that moment, having arranged at the last minute to go to Beijing for the game with my wife Kristin. We were on holiday in St Tropez when we heard that Iceland had got into the final. I rang my secretary and asked her to get us to China. I wanted to be there at the moment when Iceland had a chance of winning gold in something. Within 24 hours, we were in Beijing. It was a symbol of how at that time almost anything seemed possible for Iceland."