Regulator refuses to register Ukrainian Exchange share issue
MOSCOW. June 18 (Interfax) - Ukraine's National Securities and Stock Market Commission (NSSMC) has refused to register an issue of additional shares by JSC Ukrainian Exchange (UX), whose license the regulator annulled earlier this month.
The refusal to register a new share issue without a public offering is dated June 14, Ukrainian media reported, citing an NSSMC statement.
The commission officially announced the annulment of UX's license on June 12, after considering a case regarding violations of relevant legislation on June 5. The regulator said it found that parties subject to sanctions under Ukraine's sanctions law have a substantial ownership stake in the exchange.
The exchange said the next day that the regulator's resolution to take enforcement action by annulling the license goes into effect 30 calendar days from the date it was issued and that it will be challenged in court. "In light of the appeal, the date when the resolution goes into effect is not final and it might not go into effect at all," the exchange said.
The NSSMC warned market participants at the end of March that two of Ukraine's three stock exchanges, UX and PFTS, might lose their licenses due to violations of license conditions and proposed to consider possible solutions, including the creation of a new exchange, as well as the voluntary surrender of the exchange licenses.
UX decided again in January to increase its charter capital by UAH 9.994 million or almost 20% to UAH 60 million with a new share issue.
The exchange's largest shareholder at the end of April, with a stake of 24.265088%, was Freedom Holding Corp, whose founder Timur Turlov was included in Ukraine's sanctions list in the fall of 2022. UX earlier appealed to Freedom Holding to gift its stake to Ukraine in order to avoid the annulment of the exchange's license.
As of April, UX CEO Artemy Yershov owned about 8% of shares in the exchange, business development director Alexei Sukhorukov held 5.9% and former Ukrainian Finance Minister Yury Kolobov owned almost 9%. The companies of Tomas Fiala's Dragon Capital were also large shareholders of the exchange, but they divested 11.5% of shares at the end of April.
UX was founded on May 15, 2008 by leading participants of Ukraine's securities market and Russia's RTS stock exchange, which later merged with the Moscow Exchange . UX was the first to launch an order-driven market, Internet trading, a repo market, settlements through a central counterparty and a derivatives market.
The official exchange rate was UAH 40.65/$1 on June 17.