RSS feediceland
’Sovereigns of fortune (a debtor’s prison break)
In 2008-2009, a sovereign crack commando unit was sent to debtor’s prison by a bond vigilante court for a crime they didn’t commit.
(Well, actually, private-sector balance sheet losses, exchange rate collapse,
The Kaupthing share support operation
You’ve read the story in the FT…
Lawyers acting for the UK arm of the collapsed Icelandic bank Kaupthing, which is at the centre of a fraud probe, have withdrawn a request to retail entrepreneur Kevin Stanford to repay nearly $2m (£1.2m) as part of efforts to recover funds owed to the bank….
‘Robert Tchenguiz knows a good deal when he sees one’
From page 75 of the Kaupthing annual report, 2006:
Robert Tchenguiz knows a good deal when he sees one. In fact, it is precisely this business acumen that enabled him to grow an enterprise,
Iceland vs Greece
The comparison between Iceland’s banking crisis and Europe’s debt version has been made before — most notably by Paul Krugman, and regarding Ireland specifically.
Iceland, the theory goes, declared a swift bankruptcy and devalued the krona.
Aladdin’s synthetic CDO lawsuit
There are two nominations that go along with this post. One is for headline of the year; the other is the award for worst (synthetic) CDO ever made, quite possibly.
From Reuters on Tuesday:
German
Icelandic volcano risk, again
As if the threat from radicalised printer ink cartridges wasn’t bad enough.
We wonder if airline investors are watching the following too (via Reuters):
Meltwater [is flooding] from the Grimsvotn glacial lake in Iceland and could signal the volcano underneath is about to erupt,
A German bad bank, a collateral switch
Hypo Real Estate — the nationalised German bank and the only one to have failed this summer’s stress tests — passed a(nother) milestone earlier this month.
It transferred assets worth a nominal €173bn to FMS Wertmanagement (FMSW) — the big bad bank set up by the German state earlier this year specifically to take on non-strategic assets and ‘risk positions’ from Hypo.
Sovereign liquidity snapshots
Curious, this. The European Central Bank dialed back its buying of eurozone government bonds last week despite panic swamping Portuguese and, in particular, Irish bonds. The ECB bought a scant €134m of bonds,
Mishkin’s very own Icelandic blow-up
A squirm-inducing video of former Federal Reserve governor Frederic Mishkin:
For those with an aversion to video-taped awkwardness, the clip shows Mishkin talking about his “Financial Stability in Iceland”
CDS liquidity update: Focus on European sovereigns
Markit’s Gavan Nolan wrote this piece
Liquidity has been one of the most important but least understood topics during the turbulence of the last three years. From the genesis of the credit crunch in the summer of 2007,
The volcano’s impact on European jet fuel prices is ‘meh’
The volcanically-induced no-flight ban over Europe is having some follow-through on European jet fuel prices.
Barclays Capital estimated on Monday that the ash cloud could be responsible for cutting up to 1m barrels a day of demand in the short term.
BA versus the volcano
So British Airways CEO Willie Walsh took to the skies this weekend — Icelandic volcanic ash, and the small matter of its closure of Europe’s northern air routes, be damned.
Walsh might well try to convince European airspace regulators that flying through clouds of volcanic emissions is safe;
A volcanic emission
There was a chap in the audience of this year’s London City debate — claiming to be a vulcanologist — who questioned the whole point of carbon trading schemes given that any savings would be blown out of the window by just one or two major volcanic eruptions in the world.
The fight for deposits in Spain
FT Alphaville alerted readers on Tuesday to some of the factors raised in Iceland’s investigative report into the country’s banking collapse.
Appendix 3: Iceland’s failed banks – a post-mortem, by Mark J Flannery of the University of Florida noted the extent to which Icelandic banks had embarked upon measures to raise depositor funds,
Iceland’s bank-berg, what lurked beneath (part II)
Continued from part I, in which FT Alphaville first discusses a portion of the investigative report into Iceland’s banking collapse written by Mark J Flannery.
In 2006, something very worrying for the Icelandic banking system took place.
Iceland’s bank-berg, what lurked beneath (part I)
In a word — quite possibly insolvency.
The full English version of the investigative report into Iceland’s banking collapse is not yet available on the special committee’s website, due to “unexpected difficulties.”
Iceland’s theatre of financial horror
Is this the most boring theatrical production in the world?
Or a valid way to take the financial crisis to the masses?
Reykavik City Theatre has announced it will be ‘performing’ a 2,000-page report on Iceland’s banking collapse,
CDS report: Greece wider than Iceland
The European credit markets widened today as the worsening Greece situation wore down the resilience shown in recent days. Greece’s spreads soared through the 400bp barrier and hit 415bp today, its widest level since the beginning of February.
Moody’s downgrades Iceland’s ratings outlook on Icesave
The prospects for Iceland were looking slightly bleaker on Tuesday, as Moody’s downgraded the country’s ratings to negative from stable on “uncertainty over external liquidity”.
Moody’s said the country’s recovery was also threatened by delays in the resolution of the country’s Icesave dispute.
CDS report: A turn in an era?
Events in history come in big and small packages. Sometimes these moments come as flashpoints; sometimes they are more subtle. Two of today’s headlines seem to be small and subtle shifts inside of a larger era in financial markets history. First,
CDS report: Cocktail hour in Athens
Markit’s Otis Casey wrote this CDS report
If the volatility in the sovereign CDS market is not enough to get the blood going then reports that protesters and Greek police were clashing in Athens today might.
CDS report: Remember Iceland?
Gavan Nolan of Markit wrote this CDS report
Credit indices outperformed stocks for the second-day running and fulfilled their promise of breaking through key resistance barriers. The Markit iTraxx Europe index closed at 68bp,
Cash and carry
It was a lesson writ large by the financial crisis; dabble in carry trades denominated in dinky currencies at your own peril.
The tale of the Icelandic krona serves as a particularly brutal parable of carry traded excess.
Sovereign CDS liquidity snaps
Did the events of last week in Dubai really send jitters through emerging markets?
Here’s something to ponder in the emerging vs developed market debate — an issue aptly summed up in Deutsche Bank’s 2010 outlook on Wednesday.
Fancy running an Icelandic bank?
Iceland’s Arion Bank is looking for a CEO. Interested? Apply here.
But first, the details:
In the next few days, Arion Bank will be inviting applications for the position of CEO, the first of Iceland’s large commercial banks to do so.
CDS report: Dubai has more in common with Latvia than Iceland
Gavan Nolan of Markit wrote this CDS report
European credit and equity markets suffered a torrid session today as the debacle in Dubai sparked a fresh bout of risk aversion. The Markit iTraxx Europe index ended the day at 89.5bp,
Icelandic collapse complete
McDonald’s is fleeing the country — citing the weakness of the krona.
Oct. 26 (Bloomberg) — Iceland’s McDonald’s Corp. restaurants will be closed at the end of the month after the collapse of the krona eroded profits at the fast-food chain,
Iceland is now better off than Ireland, German bank says
That’s Deutsche Bank, to be exact, in a note entitled “Iceland v Ireland: Is the difference really only one letter?”
In it, DB is exploring the differences between the two island economies — starting with a bit of historical background: