Citi builds on emerging markets rep 04 February 2014Moscow Reporter: Georgina Lavers
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Citi has broken into the Russian market by launching lending services in Russian securities through its OpenLend platform.
The decision follows launches in India and Malaysia, and reinforces Citi’s aim to build focus in the emerging markets.
“The launch of lending in Russian securities is a key development in a large market with tremendous potential, and offers an alternative to repo deals which have been a popular type of operation in Russia for many years,” said Alexei Fedotov, securities and fund services head at Russia & CIS ZAO Citibank in Moscow.
Russia’s repo market development has been in motion for the last few years. In 2010, The National Securities Market Association in Russia created the country's first repo market survey, which revealed that one of characteristics of the repo market at that time was a relatively high degree of concentration of repo trades, performed by leading operators of financial market: the 10 top repo providers made up about 70 percent of all repos in the market.
The survey added that repo trades continued to remain in the most degree very short-term: one day transactions made up 64.5 percent of overall market.
“Citi is committed to pioneer new markets for our clients. This continued expansion of our product offering, leverages our deep on-the-ground expertise and enables us to present our clients with new and unique revenue opportunities,” said David Martocci, global head of securities finance at Citi Investor Services.
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