OREANDA-NEWS. National Settlement Depository (NSD), Russia's central securities depository, announces that its team has held a number of meetings and seminars in Asia's financial centers - Hong Kong and Singapore.

From 17 to 20 November 2014 a delegation of representatives of NSD, the Bank of Russia, Russia's Ministry of Finance and the Moscow Exchange conducted a series of seminars for financial market participants in Hong Kong and Singapore. In addition to this, bilateral meetings with representatives of regulators, infrastructural organizations of the securities market and the banking community of Asian financial centers were organized. The key goal of the visit was to develop a long term cooperation with partners in these new markets.

The attendees of the events were provided with an opportunity to know more about Russian market infrastructure, instruments and its development plans. NSD representatives described the introduction of a nominee institution, the access to Russian securities market provided to Euroclear and Clearstream, spoke about the use of newest SWIFT formats and international risk management standards. Moreover, the representatives of the Bank of Russia, Ministry of Finance and major issuers presented to the seminar participants the objectives of creating the megaregulator, described the Bank of Russia's money and credit policy, Russia's macroeconomic indicators and Russian stock market potential in respect of foreign investments.

More than 100 persons attended the seminars; among them were representatives of the major regional banks, brokerage firms, asset management companies, sovereign funds, consultancies and business community.

The participants of the meetings gave their opinions on practicality and preparedness to the further development of bilateral relations between infrastructural organizations of Russia, Hong Kong and Singapore, and agreed to continue cooperation at various levels.

Eddie Astanin, Chairman of the Supervisory Board, NSD, said: "I can say that for NSD such meetings with investors have become a tradition and are a good business practice. A series of meetings and seminars held in 2014 was a logical continuation of the meetings with investors and market participants in the USA and London we held in 2013 when we presented Russia's newly created central securities depository. Russian companies have been attracting funds in the Asian region for a long time; we see Asian investors' interest in Russian issuers, there is a great experience of building links between NSD and foreign CSDs. This gives us grounds for more active interactions between our countries' infrastructural institutions. The developed post-trading settlement infrastructure plays an important role for foreign investors assessing risk in entering the Russian market. Foreign participants' awareness of the current situation in Russia's financial infrastructure, Russian companies' and the economy's potential is also crucial. This is why we organize these meetings and presentations. In future, NSD plans to meet investors, market participants and regulators in global financial centers. I think that these meetings contribute a lot to national market development, increasing its competitiveness and attractiveness for investors."