Moscow Exchange welcomes first foreign bank to currency trading
2013-02-07 18:01:13
Moscow Exchange MICEX-RTS has granted the first foreign bank access to its currency trading market as part of the creation of an integrated exchange currency market for member countries of the Eurasian Economic Community.
The bank is BSP-Sberbank, a Belarusian subsidiary of leading Russian lender Sberbank.
"I think that this day is difficult to overestimate, but we are still at the beginning of the road to building a common financial market, including a securities market," Timur Suleimenov, a member of the Eurasian Economic Commission's economic and financial policy board, said on Thursday at the opening of the integrated market.
Now resident banks of EurAsEC have the same conditions for entering the currency market as resident banks of Russia, Alexander Bogatyr, the deputy director of international financial and economic relations at the Central Bank of Russia, said at the opening ceremony.
He recalled that work on creating an integrated market has been underway since 2006.
"It's gratifying that we've gotten off the ground and moved forward," Moscow Exchange deputy CEO Andrei Shemetov said.
The exchange expects new trading participants from EurAsEC countries not only on the currency market, but also on the exchange's other markets, said Igor Marich, managing director for the money market at the Moscow Exchange.
In addition to the main currency pairs, the market currently trades the Ukrainian hryvnia, Belarusian ruble and Kazakhstan's tenge for Russian rubles with today delivery.
Marich said that if there is interest in other EurAsEC currencies the exchange could launch new pairs fairly quickly.
He said the Moscow Exchange's currency market has seen some major changes in the past year, with trading time extended, new instruments introduced and nonbank institutions allowed direct access.
More than ten nonbank institutions have now plugged in directly to the currency market and their number is expected to increase to about 20, Marich told reporters. "We estimate that their share of currency market turnover could amount to 5-10%," he said.
Marich also confirmed that the exchange plans to expand trading instruments for the yuan/ruble pair, which is now traded only for today delivery from 10:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. Moscow time. "In the first-second quarter we plan to introduce an instrument with tomorrow delivery, as well as swaps, we'll certainly do one-day swaps," he said.