Ukraine plans to invite global players in financial markets to become shareholders in its state capital market holding, Andrii Suprun, Head of Division for Custodial Accounting of Government Securities at Ukraine’s central bank, told Kyiv Post.
The country’s economic bloc is laying the groundwork for reforms to ease the local capital market’s ownership structure in a bid to help attract domestic and foreign investors and create more financial instruments to invest in Ukraine.
The National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) and the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) will develop new legislation to implement the reforms and create the new capital market holding, Suprun said.
He made the remarks during a panel discussion, “Monitoring the implementation of the IMF program and EU assistance, Sept. 2025”, organised by the Resilience, Reconstruction and Relief for Ukraine (RR4U) consortium.
In July 2025, Ukraine signed a memorandum with the EBRD to relaunch capital markets.
Under the memorandum, Ukraine will reform the regulation of critical institutions that handle securities record-keeping, clearing, and settlement, the National Depository of Ukraine (NDU) and Settlement Center (SC).
The central bank wants to optimize the ownership of the NDU and SC, transferring the state’s corporate rights to the NBU.
NBU will then create one holding company that will manage trading, clearing and settlements, and the securities depository.
Ukraine plans to invite international players to take shares in the restructured institutions, signaling that the country is becoming a more reliable destination for foreign investment.
Internationally renowned financial players like Deutsche Börse or NASDAQ might potentially be offered a stake in such a future holding company, Suprun told Kyiv Post.
“Imagine if NASDAQ or Deutsche Börse becomes a shareholder – this will be a sign of quality for foreign investors and additional expertise,” he said.
Although the list is not limited to these organizations, EBRD could also be included, as it signed the memorandum to help reform the capital market, Kyiv Post previously reported.
The NBU has not yet made any relevant regulatory decisions, despite the intentions it has expressed.
The ownership stake of the National Depository of Ukraine has already been transferred to the NBU, Suprun said during the RRR4U consortium’s panel discussion.
The RRR4U is a consortium of leading Ukrainian NGOs including the Institute for Economic Research (IER), Dixi Group, the Institute of Analytics and Advocacy, and the Centre for Economic Strategy (CES).
Previously, Ukraine’s Ministry of Finance wrote that international investors will get access to the new financial market body through a public tender process.
Under the reforms, Ukraine also aims to launch a new stock exchange.
Ukraine needs to mobilize domestic and foreign capital for recovery and economic growth and, as a precursor to accession to the European Union, it also needs to make changes in capital markets in line with EU legislation, particularly the Financial Services Acquis (Chapter 9).
The country’s push to establish a functioning capital market is being driven by these accession requirements, the need to mobilize capital amid Russia’s devastating full-scale invasion and the signing of a mineral deal with the US.
The total cost of reconstruction and recovery after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, over the next decade is protected to cost the Ukrainian economy $524 billion – approximately 2.8 times Ukraine’s estimated nominal GDP for 2024, according to an updated joint Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment (RDNA4) for Ukraine.
Previously, Ukrainian authorities expressed the need for solid capital market infrastructure for retail clients in Ukraine in 2017, 2020 and in 2021 – but Ukraine still has not witnessed a working retail stock market since 2008’s global financial meltdown.