All companies are required to register with the State Register, held by the Department of Statistics. The Joint Ventures and foreign capital companies are registered in the Ministry of Economics. The Public Joint Stock Companies must register their share capital on National Stock Exchange and provide the National Stock Exchange with its annual balance sheets.

Only public limited companies are obliged to publish accounts however non compliance is common. All companies are obliged to submit accounts annually to the Tax Authority, the Social Security Committee and the State Registry. This information is not available to the public.

Here is a breakdown of information available in Latvia and where this information is obtained from.

• registration data (copany code, registration number, date of registration, line of business, registered address, start date, principals, legal form)

Local telephone directory:

• company name
• address details
• telephone/fax numbers
• trademarks
• branches/subsidiaries

Direct telephone interview:

• activity/market territory
• client type & number
• premises/branches/divisions/employees
• affiliations
• principals' antecedents
• expansion plans
• balance sheets/profit & loss/projected sales

Business publications and news clippings:

• news articles concerning the subject company and its shareholders are clipped from the three principal national newspapers (daily)
• public courts/newspapers
• protested bills
• bankruptcies
• legal suits

Business partnership data exchange:

• debt collection cases
• protested bills

The court system is currently unregulated by laws.

All publicly available data is collected and verified from each of the above data sources by our locally positioned D&B Correspondent for each Business Information Report request received.

Should you require any further information or have any questions, please contact your local Customer Service Centre.

Business Information Report enquiries which are placed with D&B's Emerging Markets Centre should always contain the below details. Unfortunately, enquiries without the below information have a much higher chance of being returned as an Unable To Locate Report. This is simply due to the fact that data sources in the Emerging Markets are not as sophisticated as those in Western Europe.

• Full Company Name
• Full Head Quarters Address (street, town, country)
• Telephone Number
• Fax Number

Any additional information such as a contact name or line of business would also help to locate the subject of your enquiry.