Baltic Index sinks again

The Baltic Index dropped considerably last week due to rapidly falling share prices in Lithuania's Kalnapilis brewery and Latvia's Ventspils Nafta oil terminal, as well as from reduced euro prices for shares in Baltic bank's members of the Scandinavian group, SEB Baltic Holdings. The Baltic Index fell 2.31 percent to 104.55 over the week from July 21 to 28.

Lithuanian and Latvian stocks suffered the most. Other Lithuanian stocks experienced only minor changes. The official list capitalization index LITIN was up 0.38 percent to 466.96 but the price index LITIN-10 was off 0.52 percent to 1009.72.

Most of the Latvian indexes fell over the week as shares in Latvijas Unibanka and Ventspils Nafta moved down.

In Estonia shares in Eesti Telekom, Hansapank and Norma barely changed. Meanwhile, Esti Uhispank and Pro Kapital shares each lost 5 percent.

Due to the large block deal with Latvijas Gaze shares the total Baltic List turnover increased nearly five times to 15.91 million euros.($14.75 mln). Latvian stocks accounted for 12.16 million euros or 76 percent of the total turnover while Estonian stocks contributed 21 percent and Lithuanian stocks only 3 percent.

In Estonia the Baltic List stocks yielded 83 percent of the turnover on the Tallinn Stock Exchange. In Latvia this figure was close to 100 percent of the total turnover while in Lithuania it barely exceeded 50 percent. The Baltic List capitalization on July 28 was 2.98 billion euros as compared to 3.02 billion euros a week ago. Estonian share of the Baltic List capitalization was 1.83 billion euros (-0.65 percent), Latvian 406 million euros (-1.1 percent) and Lithuanian 743 million euros (-1.2 percent).