STATEMENT FROM THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER

2023 marked the year when the Russian financial market was adapting to new conditions and gradually recovering. The Russian financial market has undergone recent structural changes that are prompting the industry to reconsider its operational strategies.

In this challenging environment, the Moscow Exchange Group continued to perform its functions of raising and reallocating capital, expanding its product and service offerings to meet the needs of all clients. The Group made a great effort to ensure uninterrupted trading and settlement across all asset categories, with the market accessibility achieved at 99.98 per cent.

Moscow Exchange’s strategy has capital markets development among its priorities. In this context, we are expanding the list of available instruments and working to improve their liquidity. In 2023, Moscow Exchange housed eight IPOs and four SPO totalling over 140 billion roubles. 206 corporates, including 55 newcomers placed 626 bond issues, raising RUB 5.5 trillion during 2023.

After international participants withdrew from the Russian market, private investors have become the most important client group for the entire financial industry. The number of individuals holding brokerage accounts on the Moscow Exchange came close to 30 million by the end of 2023. Over three million people made transactions on the exchange every month during the past year, and more than one million transacted daily after September. In 2023, private investors invested more than one trillion roubles in securities.

Attracting long money requires private investors coming into the market to stay there for years. This means they need to have the required knowledge, positive investment experience, protection of their rights, and access to a diverse range of instruments to diversify their portfolios. More than two million people have already benefited from our Investor’s Way training course.

The personal finance platform Finuslugi continued to be actively developed. In 2023, the number of Finuslugi platform’s clients reached near 1.8 million, with the deposit portfolio growing fourfold. 24 banks and 19 insurance companies connected to the platform, showing an increasing popularity of the platform among financial companies.

The Exchange is active in developing OTC segment. In 2023, along with OTC bond trading service, in 2023 the Exchange started offering OTC trading service with settlement through CCP for shares, including for those not listed on the Exchange. Migration of trading in equities and bonds to T+1 settlement cycle allowed to reduce time costs of market transactions, synchronize settlements with other markets and facilitate liquidity management mechanisms.

In 2023, the flagship products on the Money Market were floating rate instruments and open-date repo deals. The FX market continued to experience a shift of a focus towards national currencies, with the share of such deals in the total trading volume on the spot market rising to 45 per cent by the end of the year. The Derivatives Market started trading in 37 new derivatives for a diverse range of assets. More than 100 thousand new clients entered the Derivatives Market at the end of the year to capitalise on trading opportunities offered by the Exchange.

Moscow Exchange successfully extends its business horizons and explores new niches. The Trade Radar terminal launched last year was the first project in a pipeline of our prospective data products. The Exchange has started developing DataShop, a marketplace for financial products, which will offer financial services and data products for market participants and their clients.

All these tendencies and changes in the market structure were incorporated into the Group’s new strategy, which we had to revise in the context of new challenges and external constraints. The new strategy largely rests on trends in the Russian financial market. These include the increasing role of a retail investor and capital market growth.

All of the above was achieved through the coordinated efforts of the Moscow Exchange Group team and the support we received from our clients, partners, issuers and investors. I would like to thank all of you for your help and trust in us.