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Iceland Well-Positioned to Weather the Storm in Turbulent Global Economy
Icelandic economy, banks fundamentally sound and open for global business investment
The Icelandic American Chamber of Commerce conference was successful and attracted well over 100 institutional investors, private equity investors and business executives.
They came to hear and engage in discussions with the impressive roster of conference speakers, including the Prime Minister of Iceland, Geir H. Haarde, the CEOs of three leading Icelandic banks – Glitnir, Kaupthing, and Landsbanki, the CEO of NASDAQ OMX Exchange Iceland, and the Executive Chairman of Baugur Group, a leading Icelandic-based international retail investment firm. Rounding out the speaker panel were top US economists, financial and investment experts from Harvard Business School, Evercore Partners and Deutsche Bank Global Securities.
This year’s conference presentations and panel discussions addressed the key global investment challenges and opportunities presented by the current turmoil in international financial markets, and how the Icelandic financial sector is adapting its business models to to succeed in a cooling global economic climate.
The conference message was clear: even in times of economic uncertainty, traditional and alternative investment opportunities abound. Iceland’s financial institutions and private investment firms are well positioned to capitalize on appropriate investment opportunities on an international scale. The underlying themes of Iceland’s economic policy for nearly two decades - liberalization, privatization, globalization and tax cuts – have paid dividends in advancing Iceland into a major economic player in Northern Europe and beyond.
In his opening address, Prime Minister Geri Haarde stated “In its most recent economic survey of Iceland, in February 2008, the OECD states that the Icelandic economy is both resilient and quite flexible. It points out that per-capita income has grown twice as fast as the OECD average since the mid-1990s and that the country had the fifth highest gross domestic product per capita among OECD member countries in 2007.”
Further, Icelandic banks remain strong according to the Icelandic Financial Supervisory Authority (FME), which points to their relatively high capital adequacy ratios, good liquidity position, increased proportion of deposits in their funding profile and their ability to withstand severe stress tests that the authority performs regularly. Prime Minister Haarde told conference attendees, “All indications are that the Icelandic banks are healthy and I am confident that they will weather the current storm in international financial markets.”
For presentations from the conference:
Evercore Partners, Jonathan A. Knee
Harvard Business School, Gregory S. Miller
