This service will give issuers the ability to disclose material facts via information agencies’ news feeds, and also to inform NSD’s Corporate Actions Center about corporate actions.

Five major issuers are involved in the service’s trial run, which allows for the majority of corporate actions to be sent to NSD. As the service is finalized, it will be expanded to all types of corporate actions.

Eddie Astanin, Chairman of the Executive Board, NSD, said: “Last summer, NSD, together with the Bank of Russia, issuers, and Russian and global custodians and registrars, proposed that authorized news agencies implement a unified information disclosure system. The Single Disclosure Window was designed to reduce issuers’ costs associated with disclosing information that is important for the market, to accelerate the inflow of corporate actions in the accounting system, and to resolve the issue of data discrepancy. Even now we can say that all these goals will be achieved.”

“Two-thirds of issuers, who we surveyed last year, expressed a keen interest in this kind of service. The project was supported by the Bank of Russia and was included in the list of initiatives to improve regulations in 2018 which was approved at the end of the annual strategic session with financial market participants. We appreciate NSD’s active help in developing the first version of the platform, and we plan to complete the project, which is connected with many legal and regulatory requirements, as well as to implement additional services for issuers, in the third quarter of this year,” said Vladimir Gerasimov, Executive Director, Interfax Group.

The Single Disclosure Window, which enables companies to publish material facts, as well as information about corporate actions through an integrated interface, assumes the implementation of NSD formats via the agencies. This ensures that information supplied through the agencies will comply with the CSD’s strict legal and technological requirements. Messages are transmitted via protected channels in accordance with the ISO 20022 format using the Moscow Exchange’s EDI system, ensuring the legal value of all messages.

Since 2003, Russian issuers, now numbering approximately 2,500, have disclosed significant facts by sending messages via five news agencies that are accredited by the Bank of Russia. Starting in 2016, issuers who opened CSD nominee accounts and issuers for which NSD performs the functions of the centralized safekeeping of securities must publish messages about corporate actions.

Two-thirds of information contained in messages about corporate actions and material facts match. In the future, it is a goal to minimize discrepancies between two types of messages regulated by two different documents - Bank of Russia’s Regulations № 454-З and № 546-P.

Issuers will use the “single window” scheme voluntarily and it will not affect existing ways to disclose information about corporate actions.