Russian Stock Market Outage Update

1. Why was this story not widely reported?
2. Will the collapse in Russian commodities prior to the shutdown continue?
3. Why did the exchange state that is was an “emergency”?
4. Why did Pravda not mention this story?
5. Is the Russian government propping up their stock market today?

On April 23, 2012 the Main market sector of the MICEX-RTS Group’s Securities market suffered technical problems, i.e. at 5.45pm MSK market data in the order book of market participants ceased to be updated.

At 5.56pm MSK the MICEX Stock Exchange General Director announced that trading was to be suspended until 6.56pm MSK in order to contain the situation.

At 6.45pm MSK the suspension was extended until 7.35pm MSK and then until 7.55pm MSK.

Effects of the 120-minute outage were not eliminated and at 8.10pm MSK the General Director announced the emergency situation in the Main Market sector based on clause 1.13.9 of the Trading rules of CJSC MICEX Stock Exchange.

Range of organizational and technical measures was taken to recover from the emergency situation and by 9.30pm MSK the operability of the trading system were restored.

To generate the representative closing price and protect investors’ rights the following schedule of trading was established:

• 9.50pm – 10.10pm – trading period in the Main trading mode of the Main trading session;
• 9.50pm – 10.10pm – execution of trades in the Negotiated trades mode and repo trades.
• 10.20pm – close of the main trading session.

The Exchange applied to the Bank of Russia for extension of operating time of the multivoyage payment processing system in order to minimize implications of the emergency situation.

Decisions taken by the Directorate of the Exchange and competent actions of Exchange’s specialists allowed trading members to close their operations including cancel orders, perform clearing and fulfill obligations under executed trades even under the outage circumstances.

MICEX-RTS realizes the consequences that the outage could bring to the market and apologizes to trading members. The Exchange firmly intends to detect and examine causes of the disruption.

For further information, please contact the Public Relations Department at (495) 363-3232.

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