VILNIUS (BNS) – Shareholders of Vystymo Bankas voted to turn it into a commercial bank earlier this week, as they approved a new statute and appointed a new council.
Vystymo Bankas, which has operated under a special law up to now, will become a commercial bank as soon as its new statute is registered with the Bank of Lithuania.
"The bank does not plan to engage in purely commercial activities in the near future, however. We will orient ourselves towards the small and medium-sized businesses and municipal project financing," said Giedrius Vegys, the bank's acting president.
Shareholders were told that, in addition to financing municipal waste handling and energy saving projects, Vystymo Bankas plans to administer foreign loans received on behalf of the state, re-lend them to companies and repay them in time. Such loans are currently managed by the Finance Ministry.
It turned out during the meeting that Vystymo Bankas' smallest shareholder, the German development agency DEG, would not swap its shares for a stake in Lithuania's Zemes Ukio Bankas as planned earlier.
Another shareholder, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, keeps to its share swap plans.
According to officially unconfirmed information, the German development bank Kredit fur Wiederaufbau has dropped earlier plans to take over Vystymo Bankas' shares from DEG.
The Lithuanian government, the EBRD and the Nordic Investment Bank each hold 29.63 percent of shares in Vystymo Bankas, with the remaining 11.11 percent owned by DEG.
