As of February 20th, New Glitnir becomes Íslandsbanki. The change in name was formally announced at a press conference today at the bank's headquarters at Kirkjusandur.  The proposed change of name was first introduced in December last year.

The name Íslandsbanki dates back to 1904, when the first Íslandsbanki was founded, to provide financing especially for the fisheries sector and the country's emerging industries. It operated until 1930, when its activities were taken over by Útvegsbanki, the Fisheries Bank of Iceland. 60 years later, three smaller banks, Iðnaðarbanki Íslands (the Industrial Bank of Iceland), Verzlunarbanki Íslands (the Iceland Bank of Commerce) and Alþýðubankinn (the Union Bank) were merged with Útvegsbanki to form a new Íslandsbanki, which later became Glitnir. Now the name Íslandsbanki will be adopted once more to replace Glitnir after the collapse of the financial system.

The decision to revive the name Íslandsbanki was prompted in part by suggestions made by a large number of the bank's customers in recent months. Íslandsbanki is a valuable and well-known trademark. The name has a long tradition behind it and reflects the bank's new strategy emphasising primarily its home environment and serving Icelandic companies and families.

Birna Einarsdóttir, CEO of Íslandsbanki:

"This is one more step along the path towards building a new bank. We realised right away that a change in name would be necessary, both in order to rebuild confidence once more and to eliminate the continuing risk of confusion between Old and New Glitnir. We are also very fond of this name and it has been clearly demonstrated that our customers are very much in favour of it."

"We have made every effort to keep the rebranding as inexpensive as possible. We are recycling as much of our marketing material as possible and nothing is thrown away. In many cases we have simply pasted a new label over the former name and try to recycle all signs. By so doing we can keep the cost of rebranding to an absolute minimum."

A new Íslandsbanki logo has also been introduced, combining elements of the previous logos of both Íslandsbanki and Glitnir. The red colour is still there, while the form clearly echoes the former Íslandsbanki logo.