ICELAND IS HOT
10 years after downfall, it’s back with a boom
REYKJAVIK, Iceland — This island nation, known for its northern lights and geothermal dynam-ics, was also the scourge of banking during the 2008 financial crisis.
But that appears to be old news for this Nordic oasis to Wall Street and London bankers, as cranes fill the sky in the capital city.
It’s so hot that even McDonald’s is following the bankers back to booming Iceland.
“You’ve heard about our tourism boom,” Sigurdur Hannesson, chief executive of the Federation of Icelandic Industries, told The Post.
“Not very long ago we had a half-million visitors each year — and now that’s risen to about 2and-a-half million. It’s happened in such a short time span, we’ve had to make new investment in infrastructure, mainly in hotels. But we’re still behind, particularly in Reykjavik.”
Cranes, construction teams and trophy projects backed by American, Chinese and European money have stepped in for some of the most ambitious schemes in Iceland’s history.
Brooklyn-born tycoon Ian Schrager, co-founder of Studio 54, is launching a luxury 250-story Marriott nearing completion in Reykjavik next to the striking Harpa Concert Hall, which opened in 2011.
The Marriott EDITION, led by Boston developer Carpenter & Co., will be Iceland’s first five-star hotel.
And despite Icelanders’ fears of an economic slowdown, fueled in part by a recent dip in tourists from New York and Europe, Wall Street bankers are everywhere here, cutting deals or looking for opportunities to invest their capital.
That’s in dramatically sharp contrast to the spectacular bust in 2007, when the government was
forced to nationalize its banks.
After Iceland last year lifted capital controls, Goldman Sachs and a band of hedge funds took a 30 percent stake in Iceland’s Arion Bank.
Iceland is also luring investments in its renewable energy and tech sectors.
McDonald’s once had four outlets in Iceland. But high costs and the 2008 financial crisis forced it to flip its last burger in 2009, and
Iceland joined a handful of mostly impoverished nations — including Zimbabwe and North Korea — where there was not a single Mickey D’s.
Ten years later, after its whitehot recovery from its financial collapse, the nation of 340,000 is poised to see the Golden Arches rise again at several locations.
There could be no more potent symbol of Iceland’s re-embrace of capitalism.