Lithuania still leadsin Baltic markets

  • 1999-08-12
Activity on the Vilnius bourse once again topped the combined turnover of the Estonian and Latvian exchanges, driven by the merger of the country's two largest private banks, Vilniaus Bankas and Bankas Hermis. The Lithu-anian bourse was also the only exchange whose indexes posted rises.

Trading activity on the Tallinn Stock Exchange continued to decline last week. Turnover on the Riga Stock Exchange has been stable, but it could hardly drop lower. Last week average daily turnover did increase by 20 percent, but only to $60,000.

The chance of a significant rise in share prices in the near future remains remote thanks to continued poor macroeconomic results in the three Baltic countries and the downturn of world stock exchanges. The drop has been sharpest in Russia, which in the past two to three weeks has lost half of the growth it posted earlier in the year.