The President of Iceland said yesterday that his country would press ahead with a referendum on whether or not to pay the British and Dutch governments compensation for losses they incurred during his country's financial crisis.

Ólafur Grimsson spoke as Icelandic officials met the City minister, Lord Myners, and his Dutch counterpart to discuss the $5.7bn (£3.5bn) the island nation owes for money that Britain and the Netherlands used to compensate their depositors in Icesave, the internet bank that collapsed with its parent Landsbanki in October 2008.

Mr Grimsson said: "For an entire nation to vote on to what extent they are willing to shoulder this burden is to me a pinnacle of democracy." Opinion polls suggest that on 9 March Icelanders will vote against a Bill authorising repayments. 30-Jan-10.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/iceland-defends-right-to-vote-on-icesave-redress-1883816.html

. . .Landsbanki was one of three Icelandic banks that boomed during the past decade, shifting the country's economic focus from fish to financial services. Deposits raised abroad, including from the UK and the Netherlands, totalled six times the island's gross domestic product, briefly putting Icelanders among the richest people in the world. But since all three had to be rescued in 2008, the economy has collapsed and the 320,000 residents face an austerity programme that makes Britain's look insignificant. . .

It will take only a simple majority of voters to reject the law and a large part of Iceland's population is angry at its treatment by the IMF and countries such as Britain. Gunnar Sigurdsson is an artistic director who speaks for a wide range of other workers when he says: "A majority of the Icelandic people are against further co-operation with the IMF. We seriously doubt that the co-operation between Iceland and the IMF is for the benefit of the Icelandic nation. It is becoming clear to us that the agenda of the IMF is primarily to indebt the Icelandic nation in order to protect the interests of investors." . .

Mr Flanagan says the IMF is evaluating the situation and consulting with Iceland and other countries. "As I've said, Icesave has never been a formal condition of the IMF programme and it is not a formal condition now either. What we require at every review is that the mix of policies, macroeconomic targets and external financing be consistent. If it doesn't add up, we simply can't put it in front of our executive board. It would not be accepted.

"Would non-passage of Icesave affect financing assurances? I don't know how these things will play out," he says. "I'm not willing to speculate."  Independent on Sunday - 10-Jan-10.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/analysis-and-features/icelands-voters-set-to-remain-out-in-the-cold-1862955.html

Regulators from Guernsey and the Isle of Man have accused theFinancial Services Authority ofabandoning them last year as Iceland's banking crisis threatened the offshore operations of Kaupthing and Landsbanki, and the savings held within them.

Peter Neville, director general of the Guernsey Financial Services Commission, told MPs sitting on the Treasury Select Committee that his regulator had expected the FSA to supply it with necessary information as Kaupthing's key regulator in London.

"We believed we could rely on the FSA because they had greater information and greater influence," Mr Neville told the Treasury Committee. "It is disappointing that things didn't work the way they should have done." 04-Feb-09.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/fsa-let-us-down-over-iceland-crisis-1545152.html

An Icelandic minister launched an extraordinary diplomatic attack on the British Government as she issued a direct plea to MPs to help rebuild shattered relations between the two countries. . . . The Labour MP Austin Mitchell, who chairs the all-party British-Icelandic parliamentary group, urged David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, to resolve the impasse. "Our government has been heavy-handed and abrupt in dealing with the Icelandic problem," he said. "We should have helped but we bullied and made the problem worse." The Icelandic government said that Britain had "set a tone that is difficult to get away from". 29-Oct-08.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/britain-has-devastated-our-economy-iceland-complains-976905.html

When Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling were talking tough to Iceland a few weeks ago – seizing the UK assets of Icelandic banks and promising to stand behind all UK savers with money in those banks' accounts – I felt a great national pride. After all, the Icelandic Government had apparently told us that they had no intention of honouring their obligations in the UK – even though hundreds of thousands of savers had deposited money in the UK subsidiaries of their banks.

Once the assets had been seized, of course, both banks inevitably collapsed. But with UK savers' money secure, it felt like our Government had done the right thing. 25-Oct-08.

http://www.independent.co.uk/money/invest-save/james-daley-whos-to-blame...

Thousands of British citizens, who had their money in the offshore subsidiaries of the collapsed Icelandic banks, have joined forces to presurise the Government into refunding their lost savings. 21-Oct-08

http://www.independent.co.uk/money/invest-save/offshore-savers-in-bid-to-get-deposits-back-967772.html