Parex

Parex may refer to:

Reverta

Reverta is a professional distressed asset management company in Latvia. With branches in Berlin, Stockholm, Tallinn and representative offices in Tokyo, Moscow, Kiev, Baku and other cities, the company employs 2,600 staff in 14 countries.

History

Parex Banka was founded in 1992 by Valery Kargin and Viktor Krasovickis as one of the early privately held banks of the post-Soviet era. It initially observed conservative lending practices, allowing it to weather a 1995 Latvian banking crisis and a 1998 Russian financial collapse which brought down Riga Commercial Bank. Emboldened by this initial success, it began to pursue an aggressive expansion into neighbouring countries. In 2003, Parex Bank commissioned the building of a new 150,000-m² headquarters in Riga. In 2005, it launched the first American Express cards in Latvia. The bank opened subsidiaries in Switzerland and Lithuania, operating successfully until the Financial crisis of 2007–2010.

Much of its lending was within the Baltic states and the bank was heavily exposed to the real estate bubble which followed Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia becoming full European Union members in 2004. Events leading to the September 15, 2008 failure of US bank Lehman Brothers led to a sharp drop in liquidity, causing international investors to withdraw assets.