Micex halts trading again for mysterious reason

By Andrei Skvarsky.
Trading on the Micex screeched to a halt today for a third time in about three months for mysterious reasons as the exchange merges  with Moscow rival, RTS.
Micex, which resumed trade at 11am, said in a statement the reason for today’s suspension were “incorrect records of participants’ remaining funds in the trading system”. Micex spokesman Nikita Bekasov told EmergingMarkets.me the exchange was investigating who or what was to blame for this.
Sources close to the exchange, which is the more liquid of the two, suggested the problem may relate to moves to combine the two rival depositories. The lack of clarity from the exchange is annoying and frustrating traders and investors.
“Yet again the Micex looks like the Mickey Mouse exchange,” said one leading trader in the capital. “If they are not transparent then people get suspicious.”
The Micex-RTS merger, to be completed by early 2012, is one of the ways in which the Kremlin seeks to attain its ambitious goal of turning Moscow into a major international financial centre.
Micex, which recently extended its daily trading hours to 11pm to the chagrin of many international investors, regularly suspended trading in 2008 and 2009.

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