Moscow Exchange will replace its head ahead of schedule

The Moscow Exchange will change its leadership - during the seven years of its chairmanship, Alexander Afanasyev has completed “the tasks provided for by the current strategy” and will leave the company on May 15, the exchange reported . In his place, a member of the supervisory board, Yuri Denisov, was recommended, whose task will be the implementation of the new strategy.

Quote. “The Moscow Exchange managed to build a first-class financial market infrastructure, significantly expand its product line, win the trust of the market and investors, and become one of the largest exchanges in the world in terms of turnover,” Alexander Afanasyev, Chairman of the Board of the Moscow Exchange.

Who's leaving

Afanasyev’s powers were extended last year until April 2020 - thus, he is leaving ahead of schedule. At the same time, Afanasyev left the exchange’s supervisory board, justifying this by separating the functions of the supervisory board and management.

Afanasyev is 57 years old, he is a professional financier, a banker since 1991. In the 1990s, he created the first investment bank in Russia with foreign participation at the Central Bank - the Russian Project Finance Bank (then KMB Bank and Intesa), and was its executive director. Since 1996 - on the board of the Imperial Bank, since 1998 - deputy chairman of the board of WestLB Vostok, a subsidiary bank of the German concern WestLB AG.

Since 2005 - Chairman of the MICEX Foreign Exchange Market Section, Chairman of the Board of the Moscow Exchange since June 2012.

What is done

Under Afanasyev, the Moscow Exchange, created in 2011 by the merger of MICEX and RTS, held an IPO (2013), and by 2017 doubled its capitalization. Both profits and quotes of the Moscow Exchange fell in 2017 due to a decrease in the key rate and interest income. However, the company continued to pay shareholders more than 50% of net profit: 69% at the end of 2016, 89% at the end of 2017, and recommended paying the same amount at the end of 2018. Free float - 58% of shares.

Afanasiev’s name is associated with key innovations at the Moscow Exchange, which brought it closer to global exchanges in terms of ease of operation: the central depository (NCD) and the National Clearing Center (NCC) were launched, and the stock market switched to a trading mode with partial depositing (T+2). True, the start of trading in foreign securitieshad to be postponed indefinitely.

The total trading volume on the Moscow Exchange in 2018 reached 861 trillion rubles, including 41 trillion rubles on the stock market. Operating income amounted to 40 billion rubles, net profit - 19.7 billion rubles. Last year, the Moscow Exchange was in the third ten exchanges in the world in terms of capitalization of traded companies. According to this indicator, it is approximately an order of magnitude inferior to the LSE or Euronext, but comparable to the Italian or Saudi stock exchanges.

Who is coming

Denisov has been a member of the exchange’s supervisory board for ten years and heads the supervisory board of NCC within its composition. He has sufficient experience in corporate governance: in 2005–2010 he worked in the top management of VTB, and in 2010–2011 he was deputy chairman of the board of the MICEX. Denisov came to VTB from VEB as a member of Andrey Kostin’s team.

What to do

The five-year strategy of the exchange, adopted in 2015, was implemented ahead of schedule, said Oleg Vyugin, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Moscow Exchange. The new strategy will be aimed at creating new infrastructure services for the financial market, Vyugin said. There are no details about the new strategy yet.