Allied Irish Banks has agreed to buy the mortgage finance business of the Baltic-American Enterprise Fund in a EUR 40 million deal, the Dublin-based company announced June 29.

The mortgage finance business, called AmCredit, was established in 1997 and operates in Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. The Baltic-American Enterprise Fund itself was created in 1994 as a not-for-profit corporation with a USD 50 million investment from the U.S. Agency for International Development aimed at spurring development of the private sector in the three Baltic states. The fund’s headquarters is in Maryland.

AmCredit provides residential home loans and has 13 outlets and 145 staff members in the Baltics, according to a press release from Allied Irish Banks. The company expects to establish its own branches in the three countries and expand the range of products.

“We look forward to working with AmCredit’s management and staff in the development of the business in the years ahead,” Eugene Sheehy, CEO of Allied Irish Banks said in the press release. “AmCredit gives us an established foothold in the high-growth Baltic market and an opportunity to develop our business in a market contiguous to our Polish operations. We plan to grow its business and to expand the range of banking products sold into these new markets.”

As of September 2005, according to a Baltic-American Enterprise Fund annual report, the corporation had nearly USD 78 million invested in the Baltic states. Most of that, about USD 66 million, was in residential mortgage loans. Most of the investments, about USD 43.3 million, were in Latvia, followed by Estonia (USD 24.5 million) and Lithuania (USD 7.5 million).

Allied Irish Banks, formed in 1966, bills itself as Ireland’s leading banking and financial services organization. While its interests have been concentrated in Ireland, the United Kingdom and the United States, in 1995 it made its first foray into Eastern Europe by investing in a Polish bank that today is Bank Zachodni WBK, now one of the country’s largest.

Graduates of Minsteres Latviešu Ģimnāzija, the former Latvian preparatory school in the German city of Münster, are reuniting this weekend to celebrate the school’s 50th anniversary—and Latvian Foreign Minister Artis Pabriks says they should keep up such traditions.

The school, founded in 1946 in Detmold by Latvian exiles, moved to Münster in 1957. A reunion to mark the anniversary runs from June 28 to July 1 and is expected to include cultural and athletic activities, as well as an exhibit of the school’s history and a concert by the Latvian rock group Pērkons.

While Pabriks himself will not attend, Daiga Krieva, a representative of the Latvian consulate in Bonn, will be there. She will read a greeting from Pabriks, who urges MLĢ alumni and their friends to keep up the tradition of organizing gatherings in countries where Latvians live, according to a press release from the foreign ministry.

More than 125 alumni and guests were planning to attend the celebration as of June 3, according to the Web site of the Latvian Center Münster, which operates in the former school. The school ceased operation in 1998, seven years after Latvia regained its independence from the Soviet Union. In its final years, the school’s focus changed and it saw students from Latvia study there.

The school’s legacy, however, is as a training ground for many Latvian youths who went on to be involved in Latvian exile organizations and, beginning in the late 1980s, returning to Latvia to work with the independence movement and then becoming involved with government, business or nonprofit organizations.

The sword of Damocles hangs over the heads of some politicians, President Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga said in her final speech to Latvia’a parliament, and the Saeima and the nation’s political parties should clean up their acts to maintain the trust of voters.

Although she said she sees no cause to dissolve parliament—as some critics of the current Saeima have called for—the president nonetheless used the June 21 speech to urge the state prosecutor’s office to step up its investigation of corruption among politicians, according to the text of the speech provided by the president’s press office.

“Already the sword of Damocles hangs over the heads of some,” Vīķe-Freiberga said, referring to the mythical blade that symbolizes impending peril. “It hangs by a hair and we do not yet know where and when it will fall. If we live in a just state, then it will have to fall sometime.”

Vīķe-Freiberga’s speech came 17 days before her term in office runs out July 7 and a national referendum is scheduled on amendments to two national security laws. The controversial amendments, pushed through by the Cabinet of Ministers and approved by the Saeima, have already been rescinded, but critics have said the referendum may serve as a symbolic vote of confidence in the work of Latvia’s politicians.

She called on all political parties to carefully review their activities and financial resources, as well as to review party members, including those who were elected to the 9th Saeima. If those parties still want to be active and represented in the 10th and 11th parliaments, Vīke-Freiberga warned, they should separate the Biblical goats from the sheep.

The president also called on Latvian citizens to become more involved in politics.

“There would be no reason to dissolve whichever Saeima in whichever time, if in the ensuing elections there would not be serious, new candidate lists to offer in place of those already known,” she said.

Although she scolded politicians, the president also thanked lawmakers for their cooperation in developing democracy in Latvia.

The president also discussed the power of her position, her achievements and the nation’s future.

Vīķe-Freiberga is in the final weeks of her presidency. The second of her four-year terms ends July 7. She will be replaced by Valdis Zatlers, a medical doctor elected president May 31 in a 58-39 vote of the Saeima.