Latvia

In January 1932, the stock corporation Mineral Oil Works A. Oehlrich & Co. with a share capital of 2.5 million lats, was forced to initiate bankruptcy proceedings. Founded in 1874, it had until then been one of Riga’s most successful companies. It had managed to re-emerge as a flourishing producer of oil products in the 1920s, even though Riga’s industries had been shut down and its machinery deported to Russia during World War I. A document issued by the Riga Exchange Committee, in charge of the bankruptcy proceedings and creditors’ meetings, sums up the company’s problems in 1932:

In the last year, the stock cooperation [A. Oehlrich & Co.] began to experience payment difficulties due to a lack of circulating funds, mainly as a result of the contract concluded three years earlier for the purchase of oil at fixed prices. However, through the ongoing struggle between U.S.S.R. and American Oil Companies, oil prices on the world market have fallen sharply, as a consequence of which the company has been subject to heavy losses because the oil is expensive to purchase under the existing contract; on the other hand, the general economic crisis and the unexpectedly high credit restrictions by local banks have had an impact on the company. ²