Questions have been raised about whether the CEO of Icepharma, Margret Gudmundsdottir, should remain as the Chairman of the Board of N1, Iceland’s biggest fuel retail and service company, after the Office of the Special Prosecutor in Iceland charged her, as a board member of SPRON, the country’s largest Savings Banks, which collapsed during the economic meltdown in 2008, with breach of trust.
This is the first time the OSP has charged a Board of Directors in connection with alleged criminal activities leading up to the fall of the Icelandic financial system in October 2008, and therefore questions were raised about her ability to sit on the board of N1.
Ms. Gudmundsdottir worked for N1’s main competitor, Shell, for 10 years and was a director at Q8 in Denmark. She was also on the board of the Federation of Icelandic Trade, before she joined Icepharma.
Icepharma is one of the leading companies in Iceland in the health care market and represents brands like Nike, Baxter, Bayer, Lilly, Merck Serano, Mylan, Pfizer, Roche, Johnson & Johnson, CSL Behring, Biomet, Coloplast, Hill-Rom, Hospira and Smith & Nephew, to name a few.
The Board of Directors of N1 held a meeting and issued a statement to the Stock Exchange about the issue.
The charges by the OSP against Ms. Gudmundsdottir were issued last week and will be represented at the District Court in Iceland on October 13th.