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UK universities have over 77m in Icelandic banks

Wed, 22 Oct 2008

There are 12 UK universities that have possibly lost some of their funding due to depositing it in Icelandic banks. Over £77 million pounds is in Icelandic savings banks courtesy of UK universities including Oxford and Cambridge University.

Oxford has £30m (5% of it's total funding) of it's money in Iceland, with Cambridge having 3% of it's total funding in Iceland (£11m).

Iceland's banks have gone into crisis because of the credit crunch which has wiped billions of pounds off the world econony due to toxic debt.

A further 3 Welsh universities had just over £8 million in Iceland, according to Universities' secretary John Denham, who released these alarming statistics.

University staff were concerned they wouldn't get paid, as has happened in certain councils across the UK. Other universities with their funds in Iceland include University of Manchester, Manchester Metropolitan Universty and the Open University.

The universities are calling for co-ordinated action in order to get the money back.