Latvia's Ministry of Finance announced that the finance ministers of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, together with the President of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, signed a memorandum of understanding to continue cooperation on developing a single Baltic capital market. The agreement is intended to create a more integrated, liquid and internationally competitive regional market, improve access to financing for companies including small and medium-sized enterprises, and support cross-border investment. The ministry said Baltic cooperation on a unified capital market began in 2017 under an earlier regional agreement and has since delivered deeper financial market integration. It highlighted a unified Baltic market structure on the Nasdaq exchange with aligned regulation and a common trading platform, as well as a regional securities depository serving Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Iceland. With EBRD support, the cooperation has also produced a covered bond framework, improvements to the legal framework for derivatives, an accelerator fund to support companies' stock exchange participation, and stronger work on sustainable finance. Under the new memorandum, the parties will assess how to broaden the investor base, expand the range of financial instruments, improve the connectivity of market infrastructure and increase investor participation.

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