OREANDA-NEWS. September 11, 2012. Moscow Exchange announces the launch of the next stage of the long-term program for boosting liquidity of the FORTS Derivatives market instruments. This program"s stage will include the competitive selection of market makers for the following quarterly options: futures-style option on futures contract on Gazprom ordinary shares, futures-style option on futures on LUKOIL ordinary shares, futures-style option on futures on Sberbank ordinary shares.

"Our first experiment with selection of market makers for the 6-month RTS Index options attracted great interest from market participants and delivered excellent results – the market makers quote this instrument successfully thereby providing good liquidity. In addition, the last selection discovered a new market maker for the FORTS Derivatives market, Solidarnost Commercial Bank OJSC, that performs now its market maker duties perfectly. We expect the same outcomes of the upcoming selection and hope to see new arrivals”, said Sergey Kalinin, Head of Trading Organization and Development on the Derivatives Market at Moscow Exchange.

Both current market makers and any Trading members may participate in the selection. To take part it is necessary:

to submit an application via the RTS Electronic Document Circulation System for Moscow Exchange until 7.00 pm MSK on September 14, 2012;

to ensure a required amount of available cash assets in the clearing register section indicated in the application by the end of the evening clearing session on September 14, 2012.

The selection participants will have to maintain two-sided quotes for the options on single stock futures on terms similar to those specified in a respective long-term agreement on fulfilling market maker"s liabilities within five Trading days (from 17th September through 21st September). Over the selection period no remuneration will be paid to market makers.

The long-term agreements on performing the market-maker"s liabilities will be executed with those market makers that will go through the selection successfully. The agreements will include a provision on an involvement of market makers that fulfill their duties in a distribution of the Exchange"s profit from instruments traded, in addition to the regular market maker"s remuneration.