Bjorgolfur Gudmundsson is the Billionaire owner, lifetime president and chairman of West Ham United. He bought the club in 2006 for £85m and immediately greenlighted a multi million pound spending spree and the dismissal of manager Alan Pardew.

Gudmundsson has made and lost millions in his extraordinary life which has seen him ply his trade as a footballer, furniture packer and a law student. He was indicted in 1985 on charges of fraud and embezzlement after the collapse of Icelands major shipping line Hafskip. The case was drawn out in court eventually taking 6 years to come to the verdict that Gudmundsson was guilty of 5 bookkeeping offences which earned him 12 months probation and a 2 year suspended jail sentence. Undeterred by this setback Gudmundsson then set up a brewery with his son, Icelands first ever billionaire, and made a tidy £200m when it was sold off to Heineken. Since 2003 he has been the chairman of Icelands biggest bank.  Gudmundsson courted controversy in his native Iceland when he pulped a book about his wifes family his publishing company was about to release because of a chapter regarding his wife. The chapter related to her previous marriage to George Lincoln Rockwell the founder of the American Nazi party and any mention of the link was removed from the book. He also attempted to buy Icelandic tabloid DV due to its treatment of the story with the intention of shutting it down upon purchase. He is said to have battled against alcoholism for 30 years.

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