Since April 23rd, 2012, CJSC JSCB National Clearing Centre has been providing clearing services and has been acting as a central counterparty for the new FX market instruments of MICEX-RTS, specifically long-term swaps and forward transactions with settlement of up to 180 days.
Participants have been given the opportunity to conclude long-term swap transactions, both in auction regime and in negotiated transaction regime, with settlement of the second leg of up to 180 days (“long swap”) for the U.S. Dollar/Russian Ruble Currency Pair. The settlement for the first leg of a swap transaction is T+1. The terms for the second leg of “long swap” transactions are 1 day, 1 week, 2 weeks, 1 month, 2 months, 3 months, 6 months.
The trade participants will also be able to conclude negotiated forward transactions of U.S. Dollars for Russian Rubles with settlement of up to 180 days; the NCC will handle clearing of these transactions.
Transactions will be concluded with NCC as a central counterparty with partial margin posting, which will enable participants in the MICEX-RTS FX market not to spend resources on evaluating risk of potential counterparties for such transactions.
The clearing procedure for these transactions is laid out in the Clearing Rules of the joint-stock Commercial bank “National Clearing Centre” (closed joint-stock company) of the unified trading session of interbank currency exchanges, approved on February 29th, 2012. The fees charged for clearing services are laid out in Amendments and Additions No. 7 to the Schedule of commission fees. Both of the aforementioned documents come into effect on April 23rd, 2012.
The introduction of long-term swaps will enable trade participants to apply new long-term financial strategies and hedge FX risks for long periods (up to 180 days) and to increase the volume of trades on the MICEX-RTS FX market through swap transactions and forward transactions with “long” settlement periods previously concluded only in the OTC market.
Notes for the editors:
CJSC JSCB National Clearing Centre, which is a daughter company of MICEX-RTS Group, was founded in October 2005. The NCC conducts clearing operations and acts as a central counterparty on the stock, currency, and equities markets of MICEX-RTS. The shareholder of the bank is OJSC MICEX-RTS (100%).
Since November 2009, the NCC has been a member of the European Association of CCP Clearing Houses (EACH) and a member of the Central Counterparty Global Conference (CCP12) since September 2011.
The NCC has a license from the bank of Russia to conduct bank operations with funds in Rubles and foreign currency and a license from the Federal Financial Markets Service as a professional participant in the securities market for conducting clearing operations. The total capital of the NCC as of April 1st, 2012 amounted to 10 billion 987 million Rubles, including registered capital of 6 billion 170 million rubles.
