UMBRELLA OVER THE EXCHANGES Into whose pocket will the gold run?

The State Committee on the Securities Market has prepared a Presidential decree on creating a unified exchange system, which will include the active stock exchanges.

The decree was prepared within the concept of stock market development in Ukraine, passed by the Parliament of Ukraine. As Interfax Ukraine reports, committee chairman Oleh Moshovyi states that the concept stipulates securities exchange activity under the aegis of a consolidated market.

Moshovyi said the draft is about “an umbrella above the bourses, which has to be created by the bourses themselves”. However, no suggestions have been made thus far by the currently active stock exchanges. According to Interfax-Ukraine, the project stipulates creating a national exchange on the base of already working bourses.

Some experts say that the chairman of the exchange committee of Ukrainian Inter-Bank Stock Exchange Vadym Hetman should have known about the project. Apparently his position depended on what exchange will be used as the base for the new system. If Ukrainian stock had been chosen for that purpose, he could have become an opponent to the project, because bids at Ukrainian Inter-Bank Exchange totaled Hr 380 million vs. 23.1 million in 1997 in the US.

However, stock traders did not support this opinion. The President of Komex-Brok Dmytro Sapunov said securities trading has not yet reached the big money level, and thus is not that attractive for such powerful structures. According to him, the battle does not go beyond intellectual, or non-intellectual, talk. As to the project, Sapunov called it “not the smartest step needed to create a stock market infrastructure”. He noted also that the project’s authors approached the problem from a Marxist perspective. President of Ukrkonsulting and well-known economist Oleksandr Paskhaver announced that he was not familiar with the project and hence cannot comment on it. He also said that any interference by the state in the stock market would worry him. Creating rules of the game is one thing and launching new state institutions is another.

Perhaps the creation of a National Stock Exchange is being lobbed due to somebody’s great interest. The question is who’s?