Exploring the Role of Foreign Investors in Russia's Local Currency Government Bond (OFZ) Market

Download or read book Exploring the Role of Foreign Investors in Russia's Local Currency Government Bond (OFZ) Market written by Yinqiu Lu and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2017-02-20 with total page 37 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Local currency government bonds (OFZ bonds) are an important fixed-income instrument in Russia’s financial markets. In this paper, based on granular data, we explore the development of the OFZ bond market with a focus on foreign investors. As this fixed-income market has experienced a liberalization of the domestic trading and settlement infrastructure, and weathered several episodes of market stresses since the 2008–09 global financial crisis, the role of foreign investors can be observed along with these events. What we have found is that foreign investors had influenced the market before they became an important player and since then they have contributed to the development of the market while not necessarily destabilizing it in episodes of shocks.