Location: Bank of Lithuania (Gedimino pr. 6)
The exhibition “Securities in Lithuania. Shares and Bonds” was opened in cooperation with other Lithuanian museums and private collectors.
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Around 200 shares and bonds (loan bonds, bons, vouchers, promissory notes, mortgage and deposit bonds) and other property documents that fall under the category of securities were put on display. The exhibits were gathered from collections of the National Museum of Lithuania, M. K. Čiurlionis National Museum of Art, the History Museum of Lithuania Minor, Trakai History Museum, Šiauliai Aušros Museum, as well as private collections of Aleksandras Kubilas and Virgilijus Poviliūnas. The exhibition presented securities dating from 1872 – when the first joint stock company, Vilnius Land Bank, was established in Vilnius – to 1940, when the Soviet Union occupied Lithuania and nationalised all credit, industry, trade and other companies. The displayed securities were divided into two categories: the oldest ones issued before 1918 and those issued in the 1918–1940 Republic of Lithuania. The latter comprised the largest part of the exhibition both in terms of quantity and variety, including state treasury notes, domestic and foreign loan bonds, temporary tags of joint stock banks and other companies, shares, collateralised loan and deposit bonds, their examples, projects and samples. The exhibition also featured securities issued in Vilnius during the Polish occupation in 1920–1939 as well as by Lithuanian capital companies in the United States.
The publication dedicated to this exhibition contains not only information on securities of specific periods, but also short reviews of the then political, economic and financial situations, circumstances and conditions of loan issue, establishment of joint stock banks and other companies, their founders, size of share capital, banknote denominations, issue volumes and distribution methods. In order to show the broadness of this topic as well as to encourage further interest and research, the publication also offers a short overview of some larger firms’ articles of association (establishment, core capital and shares), although securities issued by these companies were not presented.