Brussels, 28/08/2014 (Agence Europe) - On Wednesday 27 August, the Netherlands announced that it had sold the €623 million claim on the estate of the Landsbanki bank to investors.
With the sale of this claim, the Dutch government says that it has now recovered all of the €1.43 billion that the Dutch state paid to Dutch citizens who lost savings in the Icelandic bank Icesave, Landsbanki's online subsidiary that crashed in 2008 (see EUROPE 10775).
Dutch finance minister Jeroen Dijsselbloem said in a press release that he was happy that the sale had allowed the Dutch state to be rapidly reimbursed. After receiving €811 million euros from Iceland on behalf of Landsbanki, the Netherlands would normally have had to wait until 2018 to be fully reimbursed.
In order to prevent the Icelandic financial crisis spreading, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom decided to fully reimburse their citizens and then get the money back from the Icelandic state. Each country reached an agreement with Iceland to this effect, but the agreements were rejected by the Icelanders in a referendum. Ruling against the European Commission, the court of the European Free Trade Association said that Iceland was not obliged to ensure that its savings guarantee fund was able to reimburse all the customers of bankrupt Icelandic banks (including British and Dutch consumers). The question ended when it turned out that Landsbanki had enough assets to reimburse the savers who had lost money.
The Wall Street Journal says the United Kingdom does not seem to be planning to act in the same way as the Netherlands in order to ensure quicker recovery of the money it paid its savers. (MB)