March 2007
Russia: Rouble moves mainstream
by Chloe Hayward, Lee Oliver
The announcement on February 12 by Icap that its spot foreign exchange platform, EBS, had launched rouble trading appears to have been warmly received by most market participants. A day later, Euroclear, the pan-European central securities depositary, said that it would now accept the rouble as a settlement currency.
Asked for his view on EBS’s decision, a senior figure at a major emerging markets player says: "It looks good to me. It should really compress brokerage as the currency makes the shift from NDF (non-deliverable forward) to deliverable."
Igor Souzdaltsev, president of ACI Russia, the FX industry’s trade body, and head of financial institutions at...
