Estonia, Foodstuff, Investments, Latvia, Markets and Companies, Mergers and take-overs

The reason why Estonians were deprived of their investment lies in the fact that shares that in name belonged to them, were actually burdened with mortgage in favour of Darby Overseas Investments. Darby just took them away from them.

The Americans used to own a fifth of the SIA Rigas Piensaimnieks. Till last autumn 80% of the company belonged to Indrek Rahumaa’s Alta Capital group company AS Alta Foods whose bankruptcy proceedings are now under way. Swedbank’s funds and gold clients became owners of the majority of the Riga plant right before Alta was declared insolvent, Gild also got a major stake.

Before applying for bankruptcy, Alta Foods was trying to restructure its obligations and looked for possibilities for it by selling or handing over assets. The biggest debt was EUR 18.4 million (EEK 293 million) worth of bonds, most of which belonged to Swedbank’s funds and the bank’s larger private clients whose portfolios were taken care of by the bank itself.

Swedbank did not want to comment upon giving away the shareholding at first. When they realised that the article would be published after all, they finally announced via the press spokesman that “no direct losses have been caused to clients and solutions are being looked for.”