13th International Conference of the Association of Eurasian Central Securities Depositories

On 8-9 September 2016, National Settlement Depository (NSD), Russia’s central securities depository, took part in the 13^th International Conference of the Association of Eurasian Central Securities Depositories. This year’s conference was organized by the Georgian Central Securities Depository (GCSD) in Tbilisi, Georgia, and was focused on the strengthened role and stabilized operations of central securities depositories amidst global instability.

The forum brought together professional stock market participants, representatives of international organizations and government agencies of Eurasian countries. The delegates’ presentations are available on the AECSD website.

NSD was represented by Eddie Astanin, Chairman of the Executive Board; Maria Krasnova, Deputy Chairman and member of the Executive Board; Sergey Aristov, Director of Client and Correspondent Relations Department, and Dmitri Ivanov, Head of Securities Accounts Network Management.

Mr. Astanin focused his speech on the Russian stock market’s recent changes and current state. NSD’s CEO also outlined the company’s strategic development areas and key current projects, including the implementation of the corporate actions reform, the launch of the Corporate Information Center (CIC), the experience in placing the Ministry of Finance’s Eurobonds, and NSD’s initiative to integrate efforts of CSDs that are the members of the World Forum of CSDs (WFC) in Fintech.

Thematic panel discussions were held as part of the conference. Ms. Krasnova participated in the discussion of the use of new technologies by CSDs. She presented NSD’s initiatives and innovative projects, in particular, the successful testing of the blockchain-based e-proxy voting prototype.

Mr. Aristov was among the participants of the discussion of special depositories’ role in the financial market operations. He gave a detailed presentation on CIC, the official source of corporate information created in the Russian market, and on the information support provided to special depositories.

AECSD’s AGM Results

Following the Association’s tradition, the Annual General Meeting of the AECSD members was held during the conference. New members – CSDs of Tajikistan and South Korea – joined the Association. In addition, Euroclear Bank was granted observer status.

Furthermore, the AGM participants considered reports on the AECSD members’ operational results, the Association’s website development, the international cooperation through WFC, and discussed further development plans.

The meeting participants placed special emphasis on the activities of the Association’s working group joined by representatives of Turkey’s and India’s depositories. During the last year, a number of joint events were organized; CSDs continued to exchange information; the annual analysis of securities markets of the AECSD member countries was held, and its results were published in a special brochure. The Association plans to continue this work in future, to organize general and individual training programs, to assess the AECSD members’ non-depository services, and to develop the regular information interchange with the Eurasian Economic Commission to harmonize our countries’ stock markets.