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|Today the annual awarding ceremony was held at the Riga Stock Exchange in the        |

|categories Broker of the Year, Contact Person of the Year and Stock Exchange         |

|Special Award. As a tradition, the awards go to the best capital market participants.|

|The award Broker of the Year 2003 went to Andrejs Martinovs from "Latvijas           |

|krājbanka".                                                                          |

|Gundega Vārpa from JSC "Ventspils nafta" became Contact Person of the Year           |

|2003.                                                                                |

|                                                                                     |

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Riga  Stock Exchange Special Award went to Ieva Mārtiņa, a journalist

from  news  agency "BNS", for her contribution to increasing the public

awareness   about  investing  in  securities  and  the  stock  exchange

activities.



The main criteria for awarding with Broker of the Year is the number of

deals, evaluation by the clients and other brokers, as well as research

done  on  the  capital  market.  The criteria for awarding with Contact

Person  of  the  Year  is  the  amount  and  quality of the information

disclosed  to  the  market, as well as the issuer's transparency to the

investors and improvements during past year.



Last  year  the  prize-winners  were:  Jānis  Ogsts (Broker of the year

2002),  Rolands  Gulbis  from "Latvijas balzams" (Contact Person of the

year   2002)  and  Valters  Paiders  from  Latvian  language  financial

newspaper "Dienas Bizness" (Special Award 2002).



The  prize  is  a  statuette  of  a self-assured man and is a symbol of

pursuit of achievement. The author is artist Uldis Zariņš.



For more information, please contact:

Krista Grintale

Corporate Communications Director

Riga Stock Exchange

Phone: +371 7212431



Riga  Stock  Exchange  is part of HEX Integrated Markets, a division of

OMHEX,  is  northern  Europe's  largest  securities market. Through its

exchange  operations within Stockholmsbörsen, HEX Helsinki, HEX Tallinn

and

HEX  Riga  (Riga  Stock Exchange), it offers investors access to 80% of

the  Nordic  equity  market  and  75%  of the Baltic equity market. HEX

Integrated Markets also operates CSDs in Finland, Estonia and Latvia.