Gerard van Vliet – how interesting that you should turn up with a lengthy comment on my website when two separate emails that I sent to you personally about six weeks ago did not even receive the courtesy of an answer.

I’ve just bumped into a contradiction. Part of the reason why the whole Icesave agreement is a problem is, I believe, that there is a likelyhood that Iceland will have to repay some of the actual principal debt itself. Somewhere between 5% and 25%:
http://www.icenews.is/index.php/2009/06/06/icesave-deal-agreed-%E2%80%93-final-confirmation-next-week/

That ties in with what Bjorgolfur Thor Bjorgolfsson has always said – that the assets should pretty much cover the guarantee.

But I recently saw a bunch of stories about UK councils looking to recover 95% from Landsbanki accounts. These were not Heritable (as that’s mentioned separately), but Landsbanki itself. i.e:
http://www.marketrasenmail.co.uk/news/Icelandic-banks-to-pay-up.5300305.jp
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/cn_news_home/DisplayArticle.asp?ID=424830

Obviously both positions can’t be true, unless the councils were somehow depositing with another Landsbanki subsidiary rather than with Icesave. And I can’t see their advisors managing to lie that much (i.e. they’re actually looking at ~1% recovery but they’re told 95%). Any ideas?

http://www.lanasysla.is/assets/nyrlanasysla/markenjune09.pdf

“the NL government only repaid up to 100.000 Euro, leaving 469 people with a loss of about 40 mln Euro”

i do not know where you got this number from. it might be that you are talking about individual depositors. the province of Noord-Holland will try to claim back 78.000.000 euros, the province of groningen is looking to reclaim 10 million, the city of amstelveen lost some 15 million and the nuclear powerplant in borssele deposited some 25mln in icesave. and that is just to name a few. the grand total loss for dutch local authorities (as far as we know) now stands at 200.000.000 euros on top of the deal struck between the netherlands and iceland

“the UK paid 100% to all the Icesave account holders, despite the fact that the savers were DIRECT savers with Landsbanki Iceland”

again, i do not know where you got this information from, but here in the county of kent the council tax is about to go up drastically, to recoup some of the £50 mln that has been lost. and that is one county.

a few years ago the british treasury send out a list to local authorities of banks that had high interest on deposits and were deemed safe. icesave was on that list and a lot of counties and councils opened accounts with them. so far they have lost £1bn, which has not been covered by the British government.

£1bn and that is local authorities only. it is believed that their could be another billion outstanding through hospitals, schools, charities etc

http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2009/06/noordholland_executive_resigns.php

http://www.fd.nl/artikel/10299874/groningen-dupe-crisis-ijsland

I was unaware of the gentleman’s agreement with Dutch authorities, but I still don’t understand why the EEA would exonerate a host country from ensuring that a foreign bank is not engaging in illegal conduct in its country. I guess the fact that the conduct wasn’t illegal (merely unethical) is the linchpin.