The Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange (MICEX) and Deutsche Börse have signed a cooperation agreement on Thursday. The two parties have agreed to provide a framework to internationalize the German and Russian financial markets with a view to attract additional investments in Russian companies.
Under the terms of the MoU the two parties will enter into detailed discussions and share expertise on a variety of fields. The partners will develop joint projects and share, for example, information on the stock and derivatives market, post trade services and indices.
“With the Memorandum of Understanding we formalize our long-standing relationship with the MICEX. The MoU will be an important step towards bringing European and Russian market participants closer together,“ said Dr. Reto Francioni, CEO of Deutsche Börse.
“The next phase of closer cooperation between Deutsche Börse and MICEX will foster the ties between the two exchanges which have been established over the past years,” said Alexander Potemkin, president of MICEX.
The MICEX Group integrates the trading and the settlement systems on a unified technological platform and holds the central place in the infrastructure of the Russian capital market. The Group is comprised of the MICEX Stock Exchange, the National Mercantile Exchange, the MICEX Settlement House, the National Depositary Center, the National Clearing Center, regional exchanges and others. These organizations provide trading, settlement, clearing and depositary services to about 1500 market participants — leading Russian banks and broker companies located in Moscow and Russia’s large financial and industrial centers. At present, the MICEX operates a number of key markets: the foreign exchange market, the stock market, the market of corporate and regional bonds, the government bonds market, the market of derivative instruments and the cash market. MICEX has a market share of 90 percent in Russia. In 2006, the total value of transactions on the MICEX amounted to about 1.9 trillion dollars. It is twice higher than the GDP of Russia.