Scottish councils have been reimbursed for the lion’s share of investments lost in the 2008 Iceland banking collapse. According to a Scotsman.com, a group of Scottish councils invested nearly £47 million in Iceland’s banking system in an attempt to cash in on exceptionally high interest rates. Several councils in the group also continued to invest in the country, even after international agencies started to rapidly downgrade the credit rating of Icelandic banks.
When the system broke down in October of 2008, the councils, and countless other investors, feared that their money had disappeared.
Now reports say that the majority of the money has since been repaid, as the country’s recovery effort continues to impress outsiders. Earlier in the year, it was claimed that Icelandic financial institutions still owed some £26 million to Scottish councils. However, substantial payments made in recent months have cut the amount owed by nearly 50 percent.
Cameron Buchanan, the Scottish-born head of the Icelandic consulate in Edinburgh, told Scotsman.com, “They have pulled themselves up by their bootstraps. The recovery is really remarkable. The banking crisis made them more and more determined to pay everything back.”