OREANDA-NEWS. September 28, 2012. The competitive selection of market makers participating in the long-term program for boosting liquidity was completed on September, 21 2012. The program concerned trading in the quarterly futures-style options on futures contracts on Gazprom ordinary shares, LUKOIL ordinary shares and Sberbank ordinary shares.

Five participants went through the selection having successfully performed market makers" obligations within five trading sessions. Based on the results of the option trading the status of a market maker was granted to the following companies: “OLMA” OJSC, “VTB Kapital” CJSC, “ELTRA” CJSC, “Solidarnost” OJSC and “Otkrytie” Broker House” OJSC. In the selection period from September 17 to September 21, 2012 the trading volume of the instruments traded amounted to over 332 thousand contracts. Open interest for the futures-style option on futures contract on Gazprom ordinary shares exceeded 148 thousand contracts, and the open interest for the futures-style option on futures contracts on LUKOIL ordinary shares and Sberbank ordinary shares amounted to 73 thousand contracts and 294 thousand contracts respectively.

"The selection procedure lets us objectively evaluate the potential of each market maker. We can assess the stability of entering quotes, the time period of maintaining spreads per session per maker, see what positions maket makers take. An equivalent selection procedure is expected to be introduced for other traded instruments”, says Ekaterina Zakharova, Head of Market Maker Control Department of the Derivative market. "Our target is to encourage market makers to enter large-sized orders with into the orderbook We aim for the environment where each market participant would negotiate the deal and the order size he needs." - pointed out Roman Sulzhik, Managing Director of Derivatives Market. - "This is an absolutely innovative systematic approach to market maker selection, and we can safely say that the new selection program for boosting liquidity will bring trading in futures-style options on futures contracts on ordinary shares to a completely new level.”