Good Readers

The website btb.is is a forum for me, Björgólfur Thor Björgólfsson, to pass on to the people of Iceland information about my business interests in Iceland and involvement in Icelandic commercial life in the years 2002-2009.  My business interests and various matters relating to me have been the subject of considerable discussion in the Icelandic media recently and it has often seemed to me that it has been a matter of pure chance whether what has appeared has been correct or incorrect – true or fabricated – the whole truth or just half-truths or merely slight misunderstandings.  I wish here to invite visitors to the website to inspect documents and papers that are publicly available and concern my business activities during these years.  I trust people to draw their own conclusions from this information.

In the years after 2002 the market value of my assets in Iceland rose rapidly.  Unlike with my investments in mainland Europe, I never cashed in the profits from my ventures on the Iceland Stock Exchange (Kauphöll Íslands).  I almost never sold shares in the listed companies that I owned and as a result I lost around 70 billion krónur on the collapse of the Icelandic financial system in the winter 2008-2009, going on listed market prices at the start of October 2008.  The collapse also left me with debts and liabilities to the tune of over 30 billion krónur and thus my total personal loss as a result of the collapse of the banking system comes to almost 100 billion krónur.  I have set myself the task of using the experience gained from this time as best I can and of learning from the mistakes that I made.  In order to do this, I have to face facts.  Lessons need to be drawn from what people did and did not do in order to repair what went wrong and to build upon what remains.  For this to happen, facts need to come out and be brought to broader attention.  I owe it to the people of Iceland that the facts of my business activities should be there for all to see.  On this website I intend to try to set the record straight in this respect.

Björgólfur Thor Björgólfsson