On 8 December 2015, National Settlement Depository (NSD), Russia’s central securities depository, took part in the annual Moscow Exchange Forum: London Session, one of the most important international events focusing on the Russian stock market. The conference brought together investors and bankers, experts of infrastructures and regulators, as well as portfolio managers and financial analysts. The high-profile speakers at the plenary session represented the Bank of Russia, the Ministry of Finance, the Moscow Exchange, UBS Russia and AFK Sistema.
NSD presented the latest news on the Russian market infrastructure development at the company’s working session opened by Maria Ivanova, Vice President, Director for Development and Client Relations. In her report on Russia’s financial infrastructure, Ms. Ivanova presented the company’s work on the development strategy till 2020 and key initiatives, described the change in competition in the local depository services market and outlined the development of settlement services. She also summed up the results of the e-proxy voting service’s introduction and disclosed the company’s plans to continue its work on implementation of the corporate actions reform that includes a creation of the e-voting platform.
The working session organizers put special emphasis on development of information services presented by Alexander Diakovskiy, Vice President, Director for Information Products, NSD. In particular, Mr. Diakovskiy spoke about plans to develop NSD as a single point of access to information on Russian corporate securities, corporate information and price data on all financial instruments of Russia and the CIS countries.
In recent years, the corporate actions reform has been one of the most important events in the Russian market infrastructure. It is therefore quite natural that this issue was discussed at the panel discussion “Corporate Actions Reform: Changes and Challenges.” The reform’s role, tasks, progress, as well as recent and forthcoming legislative changes were discussed by Maria Krasnova, Deputy Chairman of the Executive Board, NSD, and senior managers of top international players: Frank Slagmolen, Deputy Head of Global Capital Markets, Euroclear Bank; Jan Willems, Vice President, Head of Unit, Sales and Relationship Manager Russia, CIS and Netherlands, Clearstream; Alan MacAlpine, Head of Transaction Structuring & Execution, BNY Mellon; and Ray Mallett, Vice President, Northern Trust. The discussion was moderated by Francesca Carnevale, Editorial Director of FTSE Global Markets, the well-known UK publication.