Ukraine’s leading securities exchange, PFTS, has named the Kyiv investment bank Dragon Capital the top stock broker by the volume of trades conducted on the exchange in 2003.

Dragon Capital beat some 35 local brokerage houses which regularly traded stocks on the PFTS in 2003. The group of the top five traders included, besides Dragon, Sinkom, Alfa-Bank, Kliringoviy Dom and Online Capital.

“We are very much delighted by this achievement. It is a clear benchmark of leadership in the Ukrainian equity market,” said Tomáš Fiala, Dragon Capital’s managing director.

Dragon’s accomplishment came in a year of impressive performance for the Ukrainian equity market. As measured by the company’s stock market index, KPDragon, Ukrainian equities jumped by 47% in 2003. KP-Dragon closed at 811.1 on December 31, having slid from the year’s high of 845.9 posted on November 11. But the year-end losses were fully recovered in the first trading week of January, when KP-Dragon added nearly 7% to reach 866.5, the index’s highest value in more than five years.

Ukrnafta, Stirol, Ukrtelecom and Dniproenergo were the most actively traded stocks in 2003. Capitalization of the market’s 10 leading stocks comprising the KP-Dragon index totaled USD 2.0 bil. at year end. Established in 2000, Dragon Capital is one of the leading investment banks in the Ukrainian securities markets, providing a full range of brokerage and corporate finance services to foreign and domestic institutional and strategic investors. In 2002, international financial magazine Euromoney recognized Dragon Capital as the best equities house in Ukraine in its annual Awards for Excellence ranking.