OREANDA-NEWS. April 4, 2008. An international brokerage department was formed within Finam Investment Holding. The new division will focus on providing domestic investors with access to foreign trading floors and also the FX market. Furthermore, it will sell Russian financial products to Western investors. Arsen Aivazov, who earlier headed up Finam Investment Company's front office, was appointed director of the new department.

Arsen Aivazov was born in 1971. He graduated from the Moscow Humanities University with the degree of economist and studied German at the Goethe-Institut in Berlin. He holds qualification certificates (1.0, 5.0 and 4.0) issued by the Federal Securities Service. Before joining Finam he worked as head of the custody department at investment company Olma, deputy head of the customer service department at Vika and head of the client service department at Dialog-Optim. In June 2005 he held the position of front office director at Finam.

The formation of the new business unit was driven by the intensive promotion of Finam's services relating to access to international financial markets. At issue are both the forex market and foreign exchanges. Currently, Finam's clients can execute transactions on all main trading floors in America and Europe. In addition, the department will be in charge of dealing with foreign investors who are interested in sinking funds into Russian assets. At the end of 2007 Finam announced the launch of brokerage services for Japanese clients. Japan's investment company Aruji Gate Securities Inc acts as the company's partner. The short-term plan is to break onto the German market.

The international brokerage department will not be only involved in client services, but also in working out new services for them. Specifically, it will oversee the development of special versions of trading platforms to meet investor needs, offerf training courses (in cooperation with Training Center Finam), prepare market research reports and establish deeper relations with foreign stock exchanges.

"Favorable market conditions have arisen, which allow Russian investment companies to move towards a new quality plateau. On the one hand, greater expertise of Russian investors is raising their interest in operations on global markets. On the other hand, Russian financial instruments remain attractive to foreigners. By streamlining its international operations, rolling out new services and widening the list of its foreign partners, Finam is looking to turn into a global broker" – Aivazov noted.