Dutch financial guru Bert Heemskerk told reporters in Holland that he doesn’t believe Iceland will ever be able to fully repay deposits lost in the defunct online bank Icesave.
Heemskerk believes that the amount owed is far too high for a country the size of Iceland to be able to pay back, even with significantly reduced interest rates. “If we talk about 100 years from now, they could pay it back by then,” he said in part, but added that even with an interest rate of 1% or 2%, Iceland would still never be able to catch up with paying back the full amount, if paying back the value of the currency at a future time and not strictly the euro amount was taken into account.
Heemskerk is well-known in Dutch business life, running one of the country’s largest banks, Rabobanka, from 2002 to 2009. He also predicted the collapse of Landsbanki in the summer of 2008. At that time, he told reporters that he believed the bank was on its way to bankruptcy, and that anyone who put money in Icesave would likely never see it again.