Landsvirkjun board clarifies: the meetings without the CEO were formally informal

The board of Landsvirkjun yesterday issued a detailed statement defining a total of seven types of board meeting. According to it, the two meetings held without the CEO were neither formal nor informal but “formally informal”, a special category of meeting that the board says it invented at a meeting that has yet to be classified.

“It is important that the public understands the difference,” said a spokesperson for the board. “At a formal meeting, the CEO is present. At an informal meeting, nobody is present. At a formally informal meeting, everyone is present except the CEO, and it is minuted, but the minutes are informal.”

According to the spokesperson, the minutes of such meetings are written in pencil on a napkin which is then kept in a locked drawer. The key to the drawer is, for security reasons, kept at a meeting the CEO is not invited to.

A new poll shows that around a third of the nation has little trust in the board. The board responded by calling a meeting on trust, but its announcement said that nobody outside the board may know where or when it will be held, “so that trust can grow in peace”.

A mechanic in East Iceland who has worked at a power station for 31 years says he has got used to it. “I haven’t been invited to a meeting since 2009, but I think that was formal,” he says. “You never know. Maybe I’m on the board.”

Parliament has now decided to investigate the matter. The board welcomes the investigation and has offered to hand the committee all documents as soon as it has held a meeting, without the committee, on which documents exist.

The CEO position is now open for applications. The advertisement states that the job includes attending board meetings “as appropriate and according to a further agreement to be made without the person concerned”.