The MICEX Group’s mission is to provide financial market participants with a complete set of competitive trading, clearing, settlement, depositary, and information services meeting the standards of an international financial center, while balancing the interests of market participants, shareholders, and the state in order to ensure MICEX‘s leadership in the stock market, currency market, and derivatives market.

The MICEX Group’s business development is based on the following principles:

• broad diversification, including product and geographical diversification, expanding IT services, and potential financial participation with other infrastructure organizations;
• maintaining the central infrastructure organization of the Russian financial market; supporting the measures taken by the state for implementing monetary policy, budget policy, and currency policy;
• a project-oriented business development strategy that reduces the time required to implement key projects due to the MICEX Group’s optimized management system;
• an effective management structure, ideally, a vertically-integrated exchange holding operating on a uniform IT platform; our planning and decision-making system in the holding ensures that the interests of market participants, shareholders and the state are balanced;
• high quality of service, including a client-centered approach, an up-to-date risk management system, financial reliability of all MICEX Group companies, state-of-the art technology, and an IT platform that meets our functional requirements and the scope of our business.

The MICEX Group’s Development Strategy for 2009 – 2011 was approved by the MICEX Board of Directors on 14 April 2009 and by the MICEX SE Board of Directors on 16 April 2009.

The strategy provides for implementing projects according to the following principles:

• corporate development;
• modernizing the risk management system in all markets;
• business diversification;
• improving the IT platform, ensuring its conformity with the goals and increasing scope of our business.

The MICEX and the RTS have announced the signing of a framework agreement to merge their businesses. The agreement determines the procedures for forming a single exchange holding. The signing of the agreement marks a new stage of the development of the Russian stock market infrastructure which implies the creation of an international leader prepared to compete with the world’s largest financial centers by the scale of the exchange and post-trading business, technological content, command expertise, standards and quality of service.

On the part of the MICEX the agreement was signed by the MICEX President Ruben Aganbegyan, representatives of Sberbank, the RF Central Bank, UniCreditBank, VEB and VTB. On the part of the RTS the agreement was signed by Chairman of the Board Roman Goryunov, representatives of Renaissance Capital, Troika Dialog, Aton, Da Vinci Capital and Alfa Capital.

The agreement is subject to approval by the RF Federal Antimonopoly Service and extraordinary general meetings of shareholders of the MICEX and RTS, scheduled for August 2011.