Letter from the Moscow Exchange CEO on the FX Market trading disruption of November 14, 2012

Dear trading participants of the FX Market,

On behalf of the Moscow Exchange, I would like to personally apologize for the inconvenience caused to you and your clients by the suspension of trading on the Moscow Exchange FX Market that occurred on November 14, 2012.

The Exchange's technical experts identified the software fault responsible for the disruption that same day. However, it took about two and a half hours to restart the trading system due to the considerable volume of orders and transactions it had accumulated.

According to our standard procedure, the Exchange is conducting a comprehensive examination into the causes of the disruption. Our analysis has indicated that the primary cause of the disruption of trading was the misalignment of data between the primary and back-up trading systems of the FX Market. Since the Exchange uses several back-up systems, technical experts were able to restore the system without losing a single client order, but it took time.

The Exchange is committed to further developing our technological systems. We continually aim to enhance the functionality, performance and speed of our systems while strengthening their reliability and security. Therefore, on Monday, November 19, we plan to install an update of the FX Market trading system to reduce the risk of data misalignment.

The Moscow Exchange entirely shares the concerns of market participants regarding technical disruptions to our trading systems. We will regularly provide you with information about the actions we are taking to reduce operational risk.

Sincerely, 

Alexander Afanasiev

CEO

For further information, please contact the Public Relations Department at (495) 363-3232.