In November, in the global stock market an upward move formed in the second half of October kept prevailing, and as a result, the majority of global stock indexes concluded the month in positive territory.

It has been so long since we last saw such amusement as this “rollercoaster” in the financial markets. That is how the situation settled in October in the global stock markets can be best described. As a result of this rapid growth of volatility, investors, used to calm and steady sequence of events, started to panic.

Continuing the bond issue programme started in 2011, ABLV Bank, AS, has performed three new bond issues: two straight coupon bond issues of USD 75 000 000 and EUR 20 000 000, and subordinated bond issue of EUR 20 000 000 at face value. During the public offer, straight bonds denominated in dollars were purchased by 112 investors, straight bonds in euro – by 54 investors, and 20 investors purchased subordinated bonds. This is a record-high demand for our bonds in the history of bond issue programme.

Despite the difficult geopolitical and macroeconomic situation resulting periodically in radical price fluctuations in the financial markets, our mutual funds managed by ABLV Asset Management, IPAS are showing rather good results.

In September, the ECB and the FRS particularly influenced the global financial market as careful attention was compelled to the results of these meetings.

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.

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.

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.