STATEMENT FROM THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER

In 2022, the Russian financial market and infrastructure faced unprecedented challenges. In this difficult environment, Moscow Exchange managed to keep the markets running and maintain the availability of instruments and services to all categories of clients.

Despite the forced break in trading in some markets, the Money and FX Markets remained open every single day and continued to perform their primary function of providing liquidity and ensuring reliable settlements. Market participants and their clients had access to liquidity management tools and conversion transactions at all times as before.

At the same time, the Group continued to actively develop all lines of business and launched many new products and market segments. At the end of 2022, total trading volumes on MOEX’s markets exceeded one quadrillion rubles.

As interest rates stabilised, the debt market fully recovered and returned to its primary function of helping to raise capital for Russian businesses and the state: over RUB 5 trillion worth of bonds were placed through the Moscow Exchange infrastructure in 2022. New types of bonds have emerged, such as replacement bonds and corporate bonds denominated in CNY.

One of the key changes on the Russian financial market in 2022 was the shift in interest towards national currencies which replaced the Dollar and Euro in trading volumes: the share of transactions in the currencies of friendly countries in total spot transactions reached 38%.

We have long been more than an exchange. We are actively developing OTC systems alongside exchange services. In 2022, we launched an OTC bond trading system with the central counterparty on the debt market, offering more than 2.5 thousand Russian bonds and Eurobonds. An OTC equity trading system is planned to be launched in the first half of 2023.

In 2022, the market structure changed dramatically with the departure of non-residents leading to a growing role for retail investors, whose share of equity trading volume reached 80%. In 2022, more than 6 million new retail investors joined the Moscow Exchange Equity & Bond Market, bringing the total number of retail clients to almost 23 million. At the same time, activity recovered towards the end of the year, with over 2.2 million people concluding transactions each month.

In response to customer needs, Moscow Exchange launched instruments aimed primarily at retail investors. New currencies and derivatives began to be traded, benchmarks for new investment products began to be calculated and the Russian carbon unit market was launched.

New investors need financial knowledge. Moscow Exchange is constantly striving to improve financial culture and literacy and provides training formats that are convenient for most novice investors. The Investor’s Way training course has already helped one and a half million people.

The personal finance platform Finuslugi continued to be actively developed. Twenty banks and 15 insurance companies are connected to the platform, presenting more than 150 offers on the marketplace. More than one million customers transacted on Finuslugi, with one in four users purchasing more than one product on the platform.

We have no plans to slow down and will continue to actively develop in all areas. We are arranging digital financial assets (DFAs) issues. We see DFAs as another category of investment instruments that can be traded in the existing financial infrastructure, where customer demand currently accumulates and there are guarantees of asset delivery and trade settlement.

We will complement our functionality with new information and analytical services and expand the range of traded currencies and futures on equity indices and currency pairs.

We are focused on providing quality services, making the infrastructure available to all clients, and supporting the work of the market and its participants.

I would like to thank all our clients, partners, investors, issuers, shareholders and the regulator for their trust and assistance in developing the Exchange infrastructure and the entire financial market.