service. While still in high school, he was running a nightclub in Reykjavík and organised the first Oktoberfest beer festival in Iceland. After high school, he studied business in New York. Fluent in several languages, and with an unusual ability to both blend in and stand out, he embodied Iceland's internationalism. Graduating from the prestigious Commercial College of Iceland in 1987, he followed in the footsteps of some of his siblings and moved to the US, in a move he has portrayed as an attempt to escape an Iceland where he felt an outsider. He began higher education at the University of California, San Diego, later transferring to The Stern School of Business at New York University, graduating with a B.S. in marketing in 1991. While studying, Björgólfur Thor took a variety of vacation jobs, including managing events at Reykjavík's two biggest clubs: Tunglið and Skuggabarinn. As a result, in 1991, he met Kristín Ólafsdóttir, now a film-maker; they married in 2010. They have three children, Daniel (b. 2005), Lorenz (b. 2009), and Bentina (b. 2011). They currently live primarily in London, United Kingdom. Business career 1990s: the former Eastern Bloc In 1991, Björgólfur Thor went to Russia along with his father and a friend, Magnús Þorsteinsson. The Icelandic businessmen, together with Russian partners, founded the bottling company Baltic Bottling Plant, which they sold to Pepsi. Next they founded a brewing company, originally called ООО "Торговый дом "РОСА" and eventually registered as Bravo International JSC by December 1997.Нерсесов, Юрий (23 January 2003). Жертвы иудейской войны. stringer-news.ru website. Retrieved 3 June 2021. Six companies registered in Limassol, Cyprus were responsible for establishing Bravo and Björgólfur Thor was president of all of them. Bravo Brewery became the fastest-growing brewery in Russia at the time, primarily through the production of the premium beer Botchkarov. Heineken bought the brewery for $325m in 2002. In 1999, Björgólfur Thor, along with an asset management unit from Deutsche Bank, founded Actavis, and invested in a privatisation in Bulgaria. In 2000, Russia opened an honorary consulate of Iceland in St. Petersburg. Magnús Þorsteinsson was appointed Honorary Vice-Consul, while Björgólfur Thor Björgólfsson was appointed Consul, he resigned from the position on May 16, 2006. In his book, Billions to Bust and Back, Björgólfur Thor chronicles his time in St Petersburg, detailing how criminal elements tried to intimidate him into giving them access to his business and explaining which security