MOSCOW (Reuters) - The Moscow Exchange <MOEX.MM> plans to start trading the sterling, the Chinese yuan and the Turkish lira versus the U.S. dollar this year, mirroring the global foreign-exchange market to attract more clients, the exchange's managing director told Reuters.
Trading the new currency pairs is part of the Moscow Exchange's strategy to develop its infrastructure amid a Kremlin-backed bid to make Moscow one of the world's leading financial hubs.
By the end of the year, the Moscow Exchange plans to start trading the sterling versus the dollar <GBP=>, the dollar against the Swiss franc <CHF=>, the dollar against the Turkish lira <TRY=>, the dollar against the Japanese yen <JPY=>, the dollar against the yuan <CNY=>, and the dollar against the Kazakh tenge <KZT=>.
Igor Marich, who oversees the money and derivatives market at the Moscow Exchange, said in an interview in mid-July that players would need new pairs for arbitrage trading, used to profit from price imbalances of the same asset on different trading platforms.
The decision to offer the new pairs, approved by the Moscow Exchange foreign currency market committee on June 26, follows its move to start offering clients repo operations with most liquid shares of U.S. companies listed in the United States.
"We are aiming at supplying Russian players with those instruments that they used to use on global markets," Marich said.
Separately, the Moscow Exchange, previously known as Micex-RTS, is also working to offer deliverable futures for gold as soon as September, Marich said, in a move to prop up bullion market liquidity.
The futures will be denominated in roubles and the weight will be measured in grams, Marich said last year.
The central bank has said it will only act as the buyer of gold via the deliverable futures on the Moscow Exchange.
Marich said the Moscow Exchange was now also looking into non-deliverable forwards for aluminium, copper, nickel and tin.
(Reporting by Elena Fabrichnaya, writing by Andrey Ostroukh, editing by Larry King)
