The Moscow Exchange (MOEX) raised its stake in BierbaumPro AG by acquiring another 65.5 percent of the company on Tuesday. After the completion of this transaction, MOEX now has 95 percent ownership of BierbaumPro AG, which holds full ownership of NT Progress, the developer and owner of the OTC FX trading platform, NTPro.
The Russian exchange first acquired stakes in the OTC FX trading platform operator last year under the arrangement that it will own 100 percent of the company over three years of signing the deal. Before the closure of the latest acquisition, MOEX held 29.5 percent stakes in BierbaumPro.
Since its launch in 2016, NTProgress has become one of the leading providers of the Russian OTC FX electronic market by onboarding over 30 banks as its clients.
Other offerings of the platform include solutions for Liquidity aggregation, matching and algo execution across a wide range of FX instruments. Additionally, it provides services to connect to more than 60 currency liquidity providers, thus handling an average daily turnover of approximately $7.5 billion in 2021.
Strengthening Presence in FX Market
The acquisition has been seen as the MOEX’s attempt to further strengthen its presence in the Russian forex market: from clearing services to trading solutions.
The Russian exchange even intends to offer clearing of OTC trades with pre-clearing collateral checks by NCC to NTPro clients by the end of this year. The exchange will eventually expand the upcoming services to market participants of other electronic platforms.
Meanwhile, MOEX has already rolled out the Linking with Global Liquidity Providers service on the FX Market based on NTPro technology. That service allows market participants to close spot transactions in G10 currencies at global OTC market prices with settlement through MOEX’s National Clearing Centre.
