September 11, 2006

MOSCOW, 11 September 2006. — Today, Chairman of the Committee of European Securities Regulators (CESR) Arthur Docters van Leuween and CESR’s Secretary General Fabrice Demarigny have met with the heads of the MICEX Group — the MICEX President Alexander Potemkin and the MICEX Stock Exchange CEO Alexei Rybnikov. The MICEX Group’s leaders familiarized their European guests with the practice of organizing trading on the MICEX, which is Russia’s largest exchange and an important infrastructure component of the Russian financial market. Participants in the meeting discussed the current trends in the development of capital markets and the regulation of operations with securities in the context of globalization.

The guests were familiarized with the MICEX Group’s exchange technologies, including the organization of trading and settlements in the stock market. Participants in the meeting noted that the growing interest in the Russian stock market, displayed by foreign investors and international infrastructure organizations, was a good basis for the widening of multilateral cooperation and integration of the Russian stock market into the world financial industry.

Participants also noted that globalization increases the importance of integration processes, which cover world financial markets and exchange technologies. The advent of foreign investors to the Russian market makes the latter an integral part of the international capital market. The MICEX Group actively cooperates with leading European exchanges for the purpose of improving Russia’s orderly securities markets. One of the latest examples of this cooperation has been the signing of an agreement with the London Stock Exchange, aimed at joint promotion of IPOs of Russian issuers in the Russian market and in foreign markets.