Failed Icelandic bank Kaupthing said on Monday it would seek to recover 32 billion krona (US$244 million) from former executives who had taken loans to buy shares in the bank. About 80 former employees, many of them former top executives, have been informed they would be held personally liable for huge loans they had taken to buy shares in Kaupthing before it collapsed in October 2008, administrators at the bank’s liquidation said in a statement.
The announcement marked a reversal of a decision made by some of the same top executives shortly before Kaupthing, along with Iceland’s two other largest banks, went bust, nearly bringing down the country’s economy with them.
In September 2008, Kaupthing’s board had agreed to allow former chief executive Hreidar Mar Sigurdsson “to remove the employees’ personal liability for the loans that had been granted to purchase shares in the bank and to henceforth limit their liability to pledged shares,” the bank’s so-called winding-up committee said.
“A decision has ... been made to rescind this cancellation ... If the due loans are not settled within the 10-day deadline, the winding-up committee shall refer the relevant cases to the court of law,” it said.
About 10 of the former employees had transferred their Kaupthing loans to private firms, and the bank’s administrators also planned to “by every means available rescind those transfers of loans to private limited companies,” the statement said. Monday’s announcement marked the latest move by authorities and administrators of Iceland’s failed banks to hold former executives and shareholders accountable for sinking the country’s once mighty financial institutions.
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