EBRD to invest 500 million euros in Baltics

  • 2009-04-18
  • TBT Staff

The president of the EBRD said the bank would support the banking and energy sectors in the Baltics (Photo courtesy of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development)

VILNIUS - The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development has announcedthat it will invest 500 million euros into the Baltic States.

The EBRD said the money, which will be invested through 2010, will go to thebanking and energy industries in the three countries.

"We speak about equity where needed, but we also speak aboutsubordinated loans, we speak about credit lines for small and medium-sizedenterprises," EBRD President Thomas Mirow told journalists in Vilnius.

The bank has recently approved a financial package for Parex Bank, thesecond largest bank in Latvia. The 22 million euro package would give the EBRDa 25 percent stake in Parex. The Latvian state currently owns about 85 percentof the banks shares after having to bail it out earlier this year.

The EBRD has also recently aquired a 16 percent stake in Lithuania's SiauliuBankas.

"We would be happy to further engage, indeed, in other banks in thesecountries; we would like to support the activities in the energy and energyefficiency field," Mirow said.

The development bank was set up in 1991 to help Europe's former communistnations evolve into free-market economies. It teamed up in February with theWorld Bank and the European Investment Bank to provide up to 24.5 billion eurosover two years in loans and investment to crisis-stricken Eastern Europe.