Emergency law

On October 6^th Icelandic Parliament passed an emergency law due to special circumstances on the financial market. The law took effect immediately.

According to the new law the government has permission to intervene in all bank activities, and financial institutions. The Financial Supervisory Authority is allowed to completely or partially take over the running of these institutions. The Housing Financial Fund can take over mortgage loans.

The Government has announced that all deposits in domestic commercial and saving banks and their branch offices in the country are entirely safe. Bank branch offices in Iceland, ATM machines and Internet banks are open. It is still possible to receive service as usual for instance the bank are still processing applications for loans and overdraft authorisation. The general goal is to make customers feel as little of the occurred changes as possible.

All efforts will be made to stabilize and improve the Icelandic krona. The Central Bank (Seðlabanki) has temporarily set the exchange rate index to 175, which corresponds to 131 ISK in relation to the Euro.

Further information will be published on the Intercultural Centre's homepage (we will do our best to translate needed information as soon as possible): www.ahus.is