The exhibition Securities in Lithuania.
Shares and Bonds. 1872-1940
Shares and bills (loan bills- bonds, bons,
promise and mortgage bills) and other related documents
of title are demonstrated in the exhibition. The founding
of the first joint-stock company in Klaipėda was regarded
the start of the share circulation in Lithuania. However,
the securities market evolved only at the end of the 19th
century when the establishment of joint-stock companies
acquired a countrywide scale. The chronology of the events
shown in the exhibition starts with the year 1872 when
the first joint-stock company in Vilnius- the Land Bank-
was founded and ends with 1940, the year when the USSR
occupied Lithuania and nationalised all its credit institutions,
industrial, trade and other types of enterprises.
The exhibited securities are grouped by
type and displayed in a chronological order by period:
the most ancient securities issued in the period from
the end of the 19th century till the restoration of the
statehood of Lithuania in 1918; loan bills issued by the
state and municipalities; securities of joint-stock banks
and other credit institutions; joint-stock companies securities
issued in the Republic of Lithuania in 1918-1940. Securities
issued in 1920-1939 in the Vilnius region occupied by
Poland, and securities of the companies of the Lithuanian
capital established in the USA are also demonstrated in
the exhibition. The period ending with 1918 is represented
by documents of title and city loan bonds issued only
by joint-stock companies founded in Lithuania or those
that had their branches therein. Other securities of a
wide circulation in Lithuania but with an insignificant
impact thereon are not demonstrated. Treasury bills, domestic
and foreign loan bills, temporary certificates, shares,
mortgage loan and deposit bills, their trial prints, samples
or drafts of joint-stock banks and other joint - stock
companies comprise the largest and most varied part of
the museum exhibition valuables and securities of the
period from 1918 to 1940.
In the exhibition you can find about two
hundred securities from the collection of the Bank of
Lithuania Museum, the Lithuanian National Museum, the
National Museum of M.K. Čiurlionis, the History Museum
of Lithuania Minor, the History Museum of Trakai, the
Aušra Museum of Šiauliai, as well as private collections
of Aleksandras Kubilas and Virgilijus Poviliūnas. These
documents cover only a part of those issued into circulation
during the period under review. Securities of some joint-stock
companies and banks were destructed or disappeared in
the war and post-war turmoil, some of them were taken
abroad, held in different private collections.
