Björgólfur Guðmundsson
| Björgólfur Guðmundsson | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Personal details | |
| Born |
2 January 1941 Reykjavík, Iceland |
| Spouse(s) | Margrét Þóra Hallgrímsson |
| Religion | Lutheranism |
Björgólfur Guðmundsson (born 2 January 1941 in Reykjavík, Iceland) was the chairman and former owner of West Ham United FC. Björgólfur was Iceland's second businessman worth more than a billion dollars — his son, Björgólfur Thor Björgólfsson being the first. He was at one time the majority owner and chairman of the now nationalised Icelandic bank Landsbanki, the second largest company in Iceland. He was ranked by Forbes magazine in March 2008 as the 1014th-richest person in the world, with a net worth of $1.1 billion. In December of the same year Forbes revalued his net worth to $0 and on 31 July 2009 he was declared bankrupt by the Icelandic courts with debts of almost £500 million (96 Billion ISK).
Björgólfur is a former footballer, furniture packer and law student, a recovering alcoholic of 30 years and an old-fashioned philanthropist. In the 1990s he was sentenced to 12 months in prison, suspended for 2 years, for bookkeeping offences, having faced around 450 charges. He went to Russia, remade his fortune and returned to Iceland, where he also had interests in shipping, publishing, food, communications and property.
Björgólfur's parents were Guðmundur Pétur Ólafsson (1911–79) and Kristín Davíðsdóttir. Björgólfur has an elder brother, Davíð, and sisters. The young Björgólfur graduated from the Commercial College of Iceland in 1962, was an organiser of the Independence Party youth wing and is described by Roger Boyes as
Accounts vary, but it has been claimed that in 1958 Björgólfur was asked by the family of Thor Philip Axel Jensen, Iceland's foremost businessman of the time, to accompany Hallgrímur Fr. Hallgrímsson to the USA to bring back Hallgrímur's daughter Margrét Þóra Hallgrímsson, who had left her first marriage to Haukur Clausen to marry the American Nazi George Lincoln Rockwell. Either way, Björgólfur married Þóra in 1963 and adopted her children by Clausen (Örn Friðrik) and Rockwell (Hallgrímur, Margrét (who died in 1989), and Evelyn Bentína). The couple subsequently had a child of their own, Björgólfur Thor Björgólfsson.
...
Wikipedia