Stephen Timewell reports from Reykjavik on Iceland’s rapid transformation into a pan-European banking force. Iceland is a truly amazing country. And it is not just the volcanoes, the geo-thermal springs or even singer Bjork that make it unique. Iceland boasts a banking sector that almost doubled in asset size last year, an economy that grew at 5.2% in 2004 and an expected 6.6% this year and a GDP per capita amongst the highest in the world at $40,250 in 2004.
What do you call a bank that has doubled in size every year for the past eight years and that jumps 248 places in The Banker’s latest Top 1000 world banks listing to reach 211th place? Some call it a miracle. Hreidar Mar Sigurdsson, the youthful chief executive of Iceland’s Kaupthing Bank, takes a more modest approach and calls it sustained rapid growth. But how has Kaupthing catapulted itself onto the world stage, quintupled its balance sheet in the past three years and more than doubled its net earnings in 2004?