Latvia’s fifth largest bank by deposits, Citadele, is planning an initial public offering on the Riga stock exchange (NASDAQ Riga) and the London stock exchange (LSE), before the end of the year. 

The CEO of the bank Guntis Belavskis, has said the bank plans to raise €115 million in the IPO and will use the funds to repay debt and to fund an expansion. More specifically he said the bank plans to repay €34.7 million to the Latvian Privatisation Agency for subordinated debt. Its expansion will focus on; small and medium-sized business development, private person lending and mortgages and consumer lending.

Citadele was created in 2010 to save Parex Banka following the financial crisis. It was made possible using a bailout from the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund.

The IPO will offer global depository receipts on the London Stock Exchange and class-B ordinary shares on the Riga stock exchange. Arvydas Jacikevicius, a Lithuanian based broker told Bloomberg that the IPO could be an ‘ice breaker’ to Baltic capital markets that are, ‘starving for new companies.’

Citadele is currently 75% owned by investment company Ripplewood Advisors LLC. It has 34 branches in the country with 273,000 customers, 14,700 of which are small to medium sized businesses. It also has a small number of customers in Lithuania and Estonia.