On October 27, Global Finance conducted a Sub-custody Roundtable, moderated by publisher and editorial director Joseph Giarraputo.
As of June 2021, the island nation met the FTSE Quality of Markets’ necessary criteria for attaining Secondary Emerging market status, with the minimum investable market capitalization and securities count requirements.
“Even though external investors have been returning to Iceland since 2008, we are still seeing instances where they are leaving the country, as has been the case for some investing in Treasury bills,” she says.
Author Jared Bibler, a principal with Swiss consultancy Katla, details the country’s Wild West banking days and the eventual fallout in his book, Iceland’s Secret: The Untold Story of the World’s Biggest Con.
Unsettled by the level of corruption he witnessed, Bibler resigned as an alternative investment portfolio manager from Landsbanki on October 3, 2008, just four days before the bank went under.
“What we do know is that Iceland’s economy will look very different 10 years from now than it is today,” she says.
The uptick in growth will be largely driven by rebounding tourism and stronger exports in primary goods, including fish and pharmaceuticals, according to the authors of the December 2021 Economic Forecast Summary published by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development .
The OECD identifies the high barriers to the entry for new enterprises, particularly in core sectors tourism and construction, as a deterrent to attracting foreign investment.
After the near-obliteration of their national economy, they have zero tolerance for corruption, which has become a game changer.
One such revelation forced Iceland’s then-Prime Minister Sigmundur Gunnlaugsson to resign after the paper revealed that he owned an offshore investment company with millions of dollars in family assets that was unknown to Icelandic tax authorities or the parliament’s personal assets register.