The head of the Supervisory Board of the Moscow Exchange, Sergei Shvetsov, admitted that the country's main trading floor would refuse to trade in the ruble-US dollar currency pair if trade with other countries finally switched to trading in national currencies. Shvetsov's words are quoted by TASS.
The top manager noted that the exchange would be ready to abandon trading in the currency pair and generally sell the rights to conduct such trading, but right now this issue is not on the agenda and it is not worth it “in the near future”.
“Hypothetically, if trade relations with Russia are not dollar-based, I do not exclude that it will not be of interest to either the regulator or the stock exchange, and the business may be sold,” he said.
Nevertheless, as long as there is a demand and need for dollars in the Russian economy, this currency pair will work on the stock exchange. However, according to Shvetsov, "there is a fading trend." Moscow Exchange previously stopped trading in another currency pair – the British pound-Russian ruble. The trading platform argued that the refusal to trade is associated with sanctions and possible risks, moreover, the Moscow Exchange faced difficulties in conducting trades.
It is not the first time that representatives of the Russian financial market have publicly spoken about the termination of dollar trading at organized auctions. In the summer, the Bank of Russia non-publicly discussed with financial market participants the possibility of stopping trading in the US dollar due to sanctions risks. The regulator proposed to abandon trading on the Moscow Exchange and create its own "analogue of Bloomberg" – an interbank aggregator of exchange rates based on data from the country's largest banks. The idea was never implemented.
Since the imposition of sanctions, the Russian authorities have insisted that any assets, including currencies from "unfriendly countries", carry an increased risk. The Central Bank and the Ministry of Finance insist that they can be blocked. However, we are talking only about foreign exchange assets that remain within the Russian financial system; outside of it, Russians can still dispose of them. The Russian authorities are making new and new attempts to squeeze the currency out of the Russian financial system in order to reduce the risks for it.