When the financial crisis hit Iceland seven years ago, Gudmundur Kristjansson, a 55-year-old fisherman with a wide smile, weathered face and mischievous eyes, almost lost his business. Interest payments on his loans soared 300 percent. He had to sell his two fish factories and two of his five fishing boats. “We didn’t invest for many years,” he said, “because we were only paying interest.”

LONDON — They are among the British moneyed elite: the head of the nation’s largest bank, a billionaire hedge fund manager and the owner of some of London’s most luxurious nightclubs.

Yet for tax purposes, they are not entirely British.

LONDON — Suggest to Helena Morrissey that she is Britain’s version of Sheryl Sandberg, and she smiles politely.

“I think I am meant to be flattered,” Ms. Morrissey, a 48-year-old money manager, said recently in her office in the City, London’s historic financial district. “But I am doing my own thing.”

WESTCOTT, England — When Taylor Wimpey, one of the largest residential construction companies in Britain, proposed building 34 homes in an empty field in Westcott, 30 miles southwest of London, it was doing just what Britain’s leaders were calling for: attempting to alleviate a severe housing shortage, which politicians consider a key factor in the country’s soaring real estate costs.

LONDON — With Andy Murray knocked out of Wimbledon and Britons bereft about yet another prominent sports defeat, there is at least one small silver lining: the British can once again embrace “Wimbledonization.”