"An International Financial Centre is when investors and other market participants feel a) comfortable and b) secure," he said.

FCSM Deputy Director also pointed out that a convenient and reliable service should be created for investors, and this refers mainly to domestic long-term investors. He said that such home investors "should be loved, gain his confidence, which itself is a difficult problem given the current state of affairs in our country. An international investor will only arrive after that".

Sinenko mentioned that the idea of the International Financial Center in Russia has been already formalized in specific plans, specific procedures, and a lot has been done in the field of legislative acts and initiatives. In particular, the Clearing Act has been passed; stock exchange, trading and the Centralized Depositary bills are in discussion following their approval in the first reading by the State Duma.

As for market volume, new opportunities and new investor instruments, the FCSM representative stated that the problems of the derivatives market had been settled in detail, including necessary tax legislation changes. He hopes that now taxation has become more transparent, logical, easy-to-use and clear to all market participants.

Sinenko named another major bill, passed in the first reading at the State Duma, the securitization bill. He said that this is an "absolutely free market" bill, which does not involve new administrative barriers or more powers for government agencies, but rather gives opportunities to create new types of securities.

FCSM Deputy Director places major emphasis on the exchange-traded fund act. "This means new opportunities for venture investment and a more convenient service from the collective investment point of view," he said.

Sinenko also underlined that FCSM and Russia government pay much attention to IPO procedure simplification aimed at lifting current restrictions. "Our task is to simplify these matters to the maximum in order to cut the expenses and the time it takes for an issuer to enter a market," he explained.

"We have a bill ready, which we call "the technical issue bill". The task of this bill is to simplify the process of share capital increase, or vice versa, nominal value change, and change of title to securities. Also we are drafting the major stake purchase bill”, said FCSM Deputy Director.

Sinenko also considers important the corporate managers liability bill. There is a lot of hope for FCSM in this bill. The main idea of the document is to create a system to make the Board of Directors work hard and be professional on a daily basis, Sinenko explained.

Among other major bills Sinenko named prudential surveillance and bondholders’ rights protection. FCSM Deputy Director hopes that the prudential surveillance bill will allow to take prudential control and finance market members oversight to a new quality level. Bondholders’ rights protection will be implemented by setting up bondholder unions and general bondholder meetings, where they will have an opportunity to consolidate and protect their opinion against an issuer or regulator.

State Duma Financial Market Committee member and President of the Regional Banks of Russia Association Anatoliy Aksakov thinks that creating an International Financial Center in Russia is "quite doable". According to him, the main thing is "to have the political will to do it".

The deputy considers it important to solve such problems as capitalization of the banking system, funding and risk mitigation. Problems with non-core business activities, which banks currently carry out, in his opinion, can be solved with the help of legislation in order to release them from this load.

Aksakov supports electronic workflow and enactment of securitization and project financing acts.

Project Group №5, Alexander Sinenko