MOSCOW, February 13 (RIA Novosti) - The Russian Trading System stock exchange will launch bond futures trading, the RTS president said Monday.
According to Oleg Safonov, the country's main stock exchange will start trading in futures on Moscow City 10-year bonds from February 14 and on Russia's Eurobonds maturing in 2020 from February 20, 2006.
The futures contracts will have settlement dates between July and September 2006.
Contracts for 10-year bonds issued by the Moscow government are the first long-term interest rate based financial derivatives. Currently, the RTS trades in 3-year bond futures.
Russia's Eurobonds are the most liquid debt instruments circulating on the over-the-counter debt market, RTS Vice President Roman Goryunov said.
The purchase or the sale of futures will require a margin of 7.5% of their value.
Safonov said the RTS is also planning to launch commodity futures trading in the summer, which will involve mainly agricultural products, precious metals and oil derivatives.
"These will be non-deliverable contracts," he said.
The RTS president said that developing the terminal market was one of the stock exchange's priorities, and that it was considering the launch of new fixed-term contracts, including weather futures to provide companies with a means of insuring against bad weather.
The summer of 2006 will also see the IPO trading floor opened to companies unwilling to completely reveal their histories during their IPO, Safonov said.
He added that the Federal Service for Financial Markets (FSFM) had set up a working group to work out the requirements for such companies.
He said he was sure that many companies would enter the Russian stock exchange through this trading floor, which was very important given the FSFM requirements restricting the issues of Russian companies on foreign exchanges, and would thus "thwart the flow of liquidity to foreign markets".
