OREANDA-NEWS. Moscow Exchange has introduced new listing rules to bring them into line with new requirements and potentialities of the law on the securities issue and admission of securities to trading. The new rules came into effect on February 21, 2013.

The document combines the Rules of listing, admission of securities to placement and trading and Rules of admission of commercial papers to trading. As a result, terms and procedures of listing for different types of securities have been harmonized and unified.

The new rules stipulate conditions for foreign issuers’ securities to be included into the Exchange’s quotation lists as well as provide for an extended range of issuers eligible to issue commercial papers, i.e. now both issuers included into the Quotation lists and issuers with securities from the non-listed segment can issue commercial papers that expands at least twice the circle of prospective commercial papers issuers.

According to the new rules, companies in which more than 85% of stocks are held by one person or a group of persons are allowed to be included into the Quotation list A, Level 1 or 2, provided that the company’s capitalization is more than RUB30 billion (for Level 1) or RUB10 billion (for Level 2) and the stake of such shareholder will decrease to 75% over two years.

Conditions for inclusion of securities into the Quotation lists have been changed to allow mutual funds and mortgage certificates to be listed regardless of their inception date if NAV (an amount of mortgage pool) is more than RUB500 million. In addition, securities can be listed before the expiration of three months if the market maker agreement has been executed and trading volume threshold has been exceeded threefold.

“Amendments introduced to the Moscow Exchange’s listing rules aim to enhance the appeal of the Russian market for issuers and investors. The innovations give more opportunities for companies to raise funds on the stock market and will surely be popular with clients”, said Anna Kuznetsova, Managing Director of the Moscow Exchange’s Securities Market. “We expect that new issuers will come to Moscow Exchange as well as investors will be able to diversify their portfolios by new securities”.