Acting president of ZAO MICEX Konstantin Korishchenko
Photo: Kirill Tulin
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RTS and MICEX May Merge
Current and future partnership between Russia’s main stock exchanges – the Russian Trading System and the Moscow International Currency Exchange – may result in their consolidation, acting president of ZAO MICEX Konstantin Korishchenko told the Vesti news channel. The exchanges must cooperate to improve exchange infrastructure, Korishchenko said. “Consolidation may follow that cooperation,” Korishchenko said. “Spending resources to support two separate exchange infrastructures is a luxury we can’t allow ourselves.”
MICEX is the center of the currency trade in Russia. U.S. dollars, euros, Ukrainian hryvnias, Kazakh tenge and Belarusian rubles are traded there, and swap deals are made. The total worth of currency trades on the exchange in 2007 was 38 trillion rubles, or $1.5 trillion (about 36 percent of all turnover by the MICEX Group). It is also the only exchange authorized to trade in government securities. About 98 percent of all stock turnover in Russia, including repo deals, are conducted on the MICEX, and about 70 percent of worldwide trade in Russian stock, including GDR and ADR, takes place there.
The Central Bank of Russia is the main shareholder in ZAO MICEX, the central company in the group, with a 29.8-percent share. It is followed by Unicreditbank (12.7%) and state banks Vneshekonombank (11.8%), VTB (7.6%), Sberbank (7.5%) and a number of commercial banks.
Trading on OAO RTS last year totaled $690 billion. Of that sum, $375 million was in trades off the exchange. More than 40 percent of its activity, slightly less than $300 million worth, is trading in RTS Forts futures and options. It is Russia’s main exchange for that trade. RTS has 159,999,900 rubles in authorized capital divided into 100-ruble shares. As of December 31, 2008, Troika Dialog and ZAO Deutsche Bank were the largest shareholder in the exchange, with about 10 percent of its stock each. Aton owns 9.8 percent, Renaissance Broker 6.9 percent, Alfa bank 5.36 percent and Uralsib Capital 5.2 percent. The Depository Clearing Co. is the nominal owner of 29.5 percent of its stock. Shareholder with packages of less than 5 percent own 28.3 percent of its stock.
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