MacDonald's Pulls out of Iceland

Icelanders will be saying “vertu blessaður” to any future cravings for a Big Mac or Chicken McNuggets.

The three McDonald’s (MCD) restaurants in Iceland closed at midnight on October 31 because of surging costs as a result of the country’s economic collapse over the past year.

All three stores are in the country’s capital, Reykjavik.

“We would have to raise our prices by 20% to get the margin needed on our products,” Magnus Ogmundsson, managing director of Lyst Hr., McDonald’s franchise holder in Iceland, told Bloomberg News. “That would have sent a Big Mac to 780 kronur” (USD 6.36), he said.

Of the 120 countries that produce the McDonald’s Big Mac sandwich, Switzerland and Norway currently sell the most expensive ones, at about USD 5.75, according to the Economist 2009 BigMac index. The cheapest are sold in South Africa, at USD 1.68, and China, at USD 1.83.

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