OREANDA-NEWS. July 29, 2014. The Citadele Group completed the first six months of the year with an unaudited profit of 14.4 million euros. This is a 74% increase in comparison with the first six months of 2013, and a 6% increase comparing to the entire 2013.

"Currently stable and gradual improvement of results is observed in all segments. Separate transactions or short-term effects do not influence results significantly. Also, the impact of the introduction of the euro was smaller than we expected," comments Aldis Paegle, Member of the Board of Citadele Bank. "Thus we can say that the development plan we pursued for three years has been introduced successfully, and it is starting to yield results."

"Considering that the Latvian economy is growing gradually the population's purchasing power is improving step by step and part of clients is able to repay their debt liabilities fully. Therefore the amount of accruals of the Citadele group was smaller during the first half of this year as opposed to 2013," explains Mr. Paegle.

"We see that Citadele has a vast potential for growth. The bank is ready for its next development phase, and is positive regarding its future prospects," comments Guntis Belavskis, Chairman of the Board of Citadele Bank.

Citadele's unaudited results show that during the first six months of 2014 the total amount of the group's assets reached 2.6 billion euros. The group's loan portfolio was 1.1 billion euros whereas its deposit portfolio was 2.2 billion euros.