The Russian Trading System (RTS), Russia’s first electronic-trading system, was established in mid-1995 with the aim of uniting trading sites scattered over the country’s vast expanses into an integral and well-organized securities market. By the year 1999, RTS developed into one of Russia’s largest stock exchanges. Electronic trade is conducted on the basis of the workstation RTS PLAZA — a unique complex of cutting-edge software and databases. RTS functions include stock bidding, source of market news updates and real time sale/purchase deals in the shares of Russian issuers. More than 350 shares and bonds are currently on the RTS operational list.

Sale leaders in RTS Board in 2001
(deals registered in the system)

The RTS Board is intended for indicative bidding of securities that are not admitted for circulation on the RTS Stock Exchange.The RTS Board has operated since Feb.15, 2001. The combined volume of deals registered in RTS Board equaled $15.3 million last year. There were 896 deals, which involved 136 million securities.

Currently, a total of 367 investment and crediting organizations are connected to the RTS Board system, where they can submit indicative bids for 360 kinds of securities of 265 issuers. Any organization licensed to operate on the securities market can get access to the system.

FORTS: YEAR 2001 RESULTS

Since it opened in September 2001, the RTS section of futures and options, FORTS, has gained momentum, and the number of its authorized participants reached 62 as of the end of that year. These are investment companies and banks from Moscow, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Samara, Rostov-on-Don, Kazan and Abakan that had acquired status as FORTS authorized payment agents. The number of deals made at FORTS in 2001 equaled 53,000 for a total of 7.8 billion rubles. As of the year’s last trading day’s close, the combined volume of open positions was as high as 514 million rubles.

Last year’s turnovers in futures and options equaled 7.7 billion rubles (50,300 deals) and 71.3 million rubles (2,800 deals) respectively.