Íslandsbanki´s Representitive office in London
November 2001
Opening of Íslandsbanki}s "Representitive office" in London
Ladies and Gentlemen:
I thank you kindly for this opportunity to be with you here today. This is certainly an enjoyable occasion: the opening of Íslandsbanki's representative office here in the City, the centre of world finance and business.
We Icelanders are more dependent than many other nations on reliable and smooth foreign trade. Our nation's prosperity and fortune have long gone hand in hand with our scope for trading with other countries. Iceland has fared best when its trade has been most open, and worst when freedom of trade was most limited. The correspondence is so obvious as to leave no room for doubt.
Six years have now passed since capital movements to and from Iceland were fully deregulated. Over this short time, great changes have taken place in the Icelandic banking world and our financial markets have grown rapidly and matured, although we have sometimes seen setbacks too. Íslands-banki is one of the best examples of how successful the outcome can be. It was formed through the privatization of state-owned financial institutions and bank mergers in the market, and Íslandsbanki is now the largest bank in Iceland.
It has long been considered a sign of maturity in Iceland to leave home and try one's fortune on foreign soil. "We seek our manhood in the ways of the world," as one of our poets once said, and the overseas expansion of Icelandic banks is a sign of their greater maturity, greater strength and greater resolve. Just as our forefathers sought to test their strength and intelligence by going on Viking expeditions, to places such as Britain, Icelandic bankers are the Vikings of today, setting of on voyages abroad in search of fame and fortune. But the difference is that everyone benefits from well-run banks, while the gains from the Vikings' voyages were rather one-sided and those visitors were not exactly renowned for being polite to their customers.
The formal opening of Íslandsbanki's representative office here in the City deserves to be welcomed. Not only because it represents new opportunities and possibilities for the bank to grow and flourish. In my opinion the enormous expertise and experience that its activities here in the heart of the heart of the financial world will bring the bank are equally worthwhile. It is important for Iceland's financial sector to enjoy access to markets where the very best players are competing, because that will strengthen it faster and better than otherwise. The expertise which will be brought back to Iceland through the activities conducted here is no less valuable than the pounds and pence that the bank and its customers will hopefully earn.
Ladies and Gentlemen:
It gives me great pleasure to declare that Íslandsbanki has formally commenced activities in the City of London.