Kaupthing Singer & Friedlander is a financial services provider offering corporate and investment banking services to small and medium-sized companies, as well as wealth management services for high net worth clients. Primary areas of activity are treasury, investment management, capital markets services, asset finance, and private banking. The company was created in August 2006 by the merger of Singer & Friedlander Plc and Kaupthing Limited.
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Singer & Friedlander Plc was originally a City of London based merchant bank. It was founded in 1907 by Julius Singer and Ernst Friedlander. Legendary currency speculator George Soros is perhaps Singer and Friedlander’s most successful ex-employee. In August 2005 it was acquired by Kaupthing Holdings UK Limited, a subsidiary of Kaupthing Bank, the largest bank in Iceland.
In August 2006 Singer & Friedlander moved its headquarters from the City of London to the Mayfair area in the City of Westminster in London. At the same time Kaupthing Bank's subsidiary in the UK, Kaupthing Limited, relocated to the same building and the entities merged to form Kaupthing Singer & Friedlander.
On 8 October 2008 the UK Treasury used the Banking (Special Provisions) Act 2008 to transfer Kaupthing Singer and Friedlander’s Kaupthing Edge deposit business to ING Direct, a wholly owned subsidiary of ING Group, the remainder of Kaupthing Singer and Friedlander's business was put into administration.[1]. There is an ongoing dispute regarding ING's refusal to accept the terms of fixed rate deposits advertised on the Kaupthing Edge website after its acquisition of the company.