OREANDA-NEWS Since April 28, the Moscow Exchange has allowed 108 blocked American shares and 19 frozen funds of the international investment group FinEx to be traded over the counter. Vedomosti writes about this with reference to information from the National Clearing Center (NCC) and the securities pages on the Moscow Exchange's website.

The list of admitted companies includes shares of the largest US companies by capitalization — Apple, Amazon, Bank of America, Citigroup, Chevron, Goldman Sachs, Intel, Coca-Cola, Mastercard, McDonald's, Netflix.

Qualified clients have received the right to conclude purchase and sale transactions with foreign securities, and unqualified clients can only count on selling. In addition, settlements are allowed only in Russian currency.

Previously, a number of Russian brokers had already launched trades in frozen assets for their clients, and at first settlements were made in dollars, and only after the introduction of US sanctions against the Moscow Exchange in June last year, they switched to rubles.

Centralization through the OTC platform allows you to combine transactions on securities of different brokers into a single platform. The Central Bank noted that the auctions provide an additional opportunity for investors who want to get rid of blocked foreign assets.

Dmitry Lesnov, Deputy General Director for Brokerage at Finam Investment Company, noted that it was unlikely that the new auctions would affect investor activity. In general, transactions with frozen assets were modest, hampered by both low volume and high spreads (the difference between the sale and purchase price of a security).