Reverta is a defunct professional-distressed asset management company headquartered in Latvia.
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 the 1998 Russian financial crisis which brought down Riga Commercial Bank. Emboldened by this initial success, it began to pursue an aggressive expansion into neighboring 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 2008 financial crisis.
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.