In January, most financial markets were elated. The surge of optimism and consequent high demand for risky assets was due to partly solving the “fiscal cliff” problem. In early January, the US president Barack Obama approved the law supposed to alleviate the “fiscal cliff” impact on the economy.

Stock exchange NASDAQ OMX Riga presented Stock Exchange Annual Award 2012 to ABLV Bank, AS, for important contribution to formation of Latvian securities market by expanding the range of available financial instruments and services.

Continuing its bond issue programme, ABLV Bank, AS will offer three more bond issues. The bonds will be issued under the bank’s Second Bond Offer Programme and admitted to the regulated market – NASDAQ OMX Riga list of debt securities.

Last year was especially successful for open-end mutual funds managed by ABLV Asset Management, IPAS, and at the beginning of January this year total value of their assets exceeded EUR 50 million.

The year 2012 was marked by noticeable slowing of world economic growth compared to 2011.

In December, market players followed exciting American blockbuster (or rather a comedy?) “Fiscal Cliff”, the central figures in which were Republican and Democratic leaders.

On 20 December this year, address of ABLV Group representative office in Tashkent has been changed.

At the beginning of December, Credit Suisse informed its customers about introducing temporary excess balance fee (the threshold criteria is to be announced later) from the 10^th of December. According to unofficial data, the excess balance fee will be about 0.75% p.a.

Macroeconomic reports released in November once again confirmed that the economic situation in the euro zone and Japan continues to deteriorate, threatening to seriously weaken the pace of world economic growth in the ending year compared to 2011.

In November, situation on financial markets matched our expectations. In our previous comment, we noted that high volatility is possible on the stock markets following presidential elections in the USA. We expected the correction to be of speculative nature and not lasting for long.