In the beginning of August, the global financial markets were heavily under the influence of geopolitics with reference to new escalation in the ‘sanction war’ between West and Russia. Russian sanctions launched in response — the ban to import food products, mostly hurt the EU states and made investors think over prospects of European economy development, taking into account not really impressive current economic situation in many countries.

During the first half of 2014, the bank and other companies of ABLV Group continued to grow, due to consistent implementation of the group’s development strategy. Although the situation in several our target markets was complex and strained, we managed to achieve planned results due to our thoroughly chosen business model, risk management, and cautious policy.

In the global stock market, July turned to be challenging, being influenced by various dynamics in the securities markets in different regions of the world. The US markets and markets of emerging countries felt quite stable.

June turned to be rather boring in the financial markets; it was determined by the activity decay practically in all segments of the market due to the beginning of summer season.

May, in spite of its bad reputation due to a famous saying “Sell in May and go away” turned to be successful for investors both in the stock and bond markets. At the beginning of the month in the stock markets certain nervousness still remained, which was caused by continuous political tension in Ukraine and the anticipation of the elections to the European Parliament with potential risk of “ultra-rights” and “euro-skeptics” getting the majority of seats. It could have caused the atmosphere of political instability in Europe and complicated the process of decision making.

Although the global political events cause certain risks for future growth of Latvian economy, Latvia remains being one of the most rapidly developing countries of the European Union, and its financial sector demonstrates even better performance.

Another issue of ABLV Bank shares that lasted from 7^th of April till 16^th of May was completed successfully. Within this issue 2 243 062 ordinary registered voting shares were issued. After the issue, the bank’s share capital is composed of 29 385 000 ordinary voting shares and 3 015 770 employee shares without voting rights. The newly issued shares constitute 7.6% of the bank's voting share capital.

In April the situation in Ukraine remained the centre of attention. The tension in the Southeastern region of Ukraine was considered by the USA and the EU as a reason to prepare new, stricter economic sanctions against Russia, therefore bonds of Russian issuers continued to remain under pressure.

On Friday, 4^th of April the Association of Commercial Banks of Latvia (ACBL) awarded winners in four categories in the Zelta monēta 2014 competition. The ABLV Bank service won one of the top prizes.

March, unlike February, in global financial market appeared to be very uneasy. The escalation of crisis in Ukraine and growing tension around the Crimea, in particular, the announcement of Russia on readiness to ship the forces onto the territory of the neighboring country caused especially in the first days of the month panic sales of risky assets.