Oleg Vyugin, the head of the Federal Financial Markets Service (FFMS), said the project of launching such trading floors in the country was new to Russia and, therefore, no specific timeframe could be given. At the same time, he said the demand for the undertaking was quite strong.
Vyugin said his service needed to formulate special requirements for information disclosure and the rules for professional investors to be admitted to the IPO trading floors while stock exchanges should draft the regulations on admitting small businesses.
Banks are cautious about extending loans to small companies that do not disclose information in full but these risks can be reduced on the stock market, the FFMS head said.
In February 2006, Russia's largest trading floors, such as the Russian Trading System (RTS) stock exchange and the Moscow Inter-Bank Currency Exchange (MICEX), announced they were intending to try to create special IPO trading premises for companies with small capitalization and incomplete information disclosure.
