The Irish Times is suggesting that Latvia could be making a play to become a private aviation finance center, following the announcement by Rietumu Bank that it had funded a new Gulfstream Jet for one of its international clients. The plane has a list price of $65m, and the bank is reported to have made the loan to a US company which manufactures executive planes. The paper cited a board member of the Latvian bank, Renats Lokomets, as saying that its customers were doing more business in the former Soviet Union and Europe were looking into the possibility of procuring jets, and that Rietumu was keen to finance such investments.
