MICEX Stock Exchange and Interfax launch joint corporate information disclosure project
The MICEX Stock Exchange and the Interfax Group are launching a joint project meant to expand the range of information services offered to traders, to establish more effective channels for the disclosure of information about issuer companies and to improve the awareness of investors about IPOs.
In the framework of the project traders at the MICEX Stock Exchange as of August 1, 2007, will get access to a comprehensive and constantly updated database of Russian securities‘ issuer companies - SPARK-Emitent - that has been developed with due account of the interests of investors. Discounts for SPARK-Emitent services and publications will be offered to all traders at the MICEX Stock Exchange, along with access codes to the corporate information database.
Securities‘ issuer companies are getting an information channel that includes the possibility of disseminating all the information required by traders. Issuers placing their securities at the MICEX Stock Exchange will be getting a number of privileges in webcasting, telephone conferences, internet press conferences and other public events and in consulting services on investor relations. This should help issuers effectively pose as investors.
With the help of the SPARK-Emitent system professional securities‘ traders will be able to offer their analytical products to the market by entering their own forecasts, recommendations to the system and adding analytical reports to the database.
"The project is offering traders the chance to use a full and comprehensive database on companies trading securities and conducting IPOs at the MICEX Stock Exchange and securities‘ issuers a new channel to communicate with the investment community, including 400,000 traders‘ clients. The existence of such a system is expected to create a comfortable media environment to effectively bring new issuers into the market, in particular to the recently established sector of the stock exchange for innovative and growing companies," MICEX Stock Exchange CEO Alexei Rybnikov says.
"The project combines the capabilities of Russia‘s biggest database of corporate information SPARK, the Interfax information disclosure system, our news services, as well as several investor relation services offered in partnership with Thomson Financial agency. We wish to bundle all these channels in a single platform and the partnership with the MICEX Stock Exchange has helped us carry out these plans," Interfax Chairman and CEO Mikhail Komissar says.
The joint project of the MICEX Stock Exchange and Interfax is meant to promote transparency on the Russian stock market, raise the standard of information disclosure by issuer companies, offer convenient and prompt access to information to traders, as well as divisions of the companies involved (back offices, depositories and analytical divisions).
*** The MICEX Stock Exchange is the leading stock exchange in Russia trading in securities of over 620 issuers, including blue chips - Gazprom, UES, Lukoil, Norilsk Nickel, Sberbank, Rostelecom, Surgutneftegaz, MTS, Tatneft and others with a combined market capitalization of about $900 billion. In 2006 trading at the MICEX Stock Exchange amounted to $755 billion, including share trading in the amount of $550 billion, which exceeds 90% of total exchange turnover on the Russian market and about 70% in the global turnover of Russian assets (including GDR and ADR). Trading is electronic and employs a modern trading system incorporating regional trading floors and over 1,500 remote terminals of 600 brokerages and banks in 100 Russian cities that service over 320,000 investors. The growth in trading corporate securities brought the MICEX Stock Exchange to the top 20 stock exchanges in the world in the early 2007, which allows it to play the role of a center for raising liquidity for Russian assets and the main floor for international investment in shares and bonds of leading Russian companies.
Since 2002 MICEX has been a member of the World Federation of Exchanges that unites over 100 stock exchanges around of world and generates 97% of the capitalization of the world stock market.
*** Interfax Information Services Group provides information products and means of communication needed for political and business solutions. The Group, set up in 1989, is a network of national, regional and specialized news agencies operating in Russia, elsewhere in the Commonwealth of Independent States, in China, and in Central Europe.
Interfax comprises companies and divisions reporting news, providing analytical services, market data and basic information, and developing software solutions.
*** SPARK-Emitent database contains the profiles of about some 2,000 companies, information about their securities, a calendar of corporate events, estimates and recommendations from analysts, consensus forecasts, landmark events and corporate news from Interfax.
The system employs reports from issuer companies, from the Federal Securities‘ Market Service and its regional divisions, the Federal Statistical Service, the Federal Tax Service, the Central Bank of the Russian Federation, along with information about bankruptcies, court cases etc. Interfax Group, which developed the system, is the authorized agency for disclosing information for stock market participants and runs a corporate newswire that is the most popular on the market. In the process of developing the system, which is annually updated, Interfax Group is determined to take into account the requests of professional traders and actively promote a higher standard of interaction between issuers and investors.