Federal Financial Markets Service disbanded, responsibilities handed to Central Bank
MOSCOW. Sept 2 (Interfax) - Russia's Federal Financial Markets Service (FFMS) was disbanded as of September 1 by presidential decree, and its responsibilities of regulatory and legal regulation, monitoring and oversight on financial markets have been transferred to the Central Bank.
The Central Bank has set up the Bank of Russia Service for Financial Markets. This service and its interregional divisions will retain the contact telephone numbers of the FFMS and its regional departments.
The service will be responsible for regulation and oversight of professional securities market participants, management companies, nongovernmental pension funds, special depositories, investment funds, clearing companies and companies that act as a central counterparty, trading organizer or central depository. It will also regulate the insurance business, microfinancing organizations, consumer credit cooperatives, housing savings cooperatives, credit history bureaus, rating agencies, agricultural consumer credit cooperatives and the actuary business.
The new service will be headed by Sergei Shvetsov, who was previously Central Bank deputy chairman responsible for monetary policy. He has been promoted to the rank of first deputy chairman of the Central Bank.
FFMS head Dmitry Pankin said in August that he had decided not to join the Central Bank.
Vladimir Chistyukhin, formerly head of the Central Bank's financial stability department, has been appointed first deputy head of the new financial markets service. The FFMS did not have a first deputy head.
Shvetsov said in August that hopefully all six deputy heads of the FFMS would transfer to the Central Bank. FFMS deputy head Yulia Bondareva, who is responsible for the regulator's liquidation, will join the Central Bank later. The other FFMS deputy heads were Sergei Kharlamov, Yelena Kuritsyna, Igor Zhuk, Oleg Pilipets and Yana Pureskina.
The FFMS was formed in the spring of 2004 on the basis of the Federal Securities Market Commission, and was first headed by Oleg Vyugin, then Vladimir Milovidov and finally Pankin.