April 24, 2006

The RF Central Bank decided on 20 April 2006 to register joint-stock commercial bank National Clearing Center (NCC). According to the MICEX President Alexander Potemkin, this decision is an important step toward transferring clearing of transactions carried out on the MICEX orderly markets to NCC.

After, in compliance with the RF Law ⌠On the State Registration of Legal Entities■, the authorized registering agency registers the establishment (state registration) of joint-stock commercial bank National Clearing Center (closed corporation) in the Unified State Register of legal entities and NCC pays its authorized capital, the Bank of Russia will grant NCC a license to carry out banking operations in Russian rubles and foreign exchange.

Joint-stock commercial bank National Clearing Center was established in October 2005 with authorized capital of 235 million rubles. It was established by the Moscow Interbank Currency Exchange (98% of authorized capital) and non-profit partnership National Depositary Center (2%). By the time NCC begins to provide clearing service, its authorized capital will be raised to 700 million rubles.

It is intended that NCC will provide clearing on exchanges and in OTC markets, including determining and calculating obligations of participants in clearing, offsetting these obligations and organizing the execution of obligations for transactions in compliance with the RF law. NCC will form an appropriate risk management system of the settlements-and-clearing infrastructure of the Russian financial market in the absence of 100% deposition of funds by participants and implement the mechanism of central counterparty,CCP. NCC will perform these tasks on the basis of the MICEX platform, which is to be modernized in future.

NCC will be Russia▓s first specialized clearing credit institution to provide centralized clearing in the orderly market of capitals. In 2006, NCC intends to begin to provide clearing service in the foreign exchange market, the government securities market and the money market. In future, it is intended to transfer the MICEX stock market to NCC for clearing and organize clearing of OTC transactions.