(Reuters) – MICEX-RTS, the Russian stock market, has hired the former heads of markets at the London Stock Exchange (LSE.L) and Merrill Lynch International (BAC.N) as directors to advise the group on its plan to compete with the LSE for trading.

The Russian exchange said on Thursday Martin Graham, the head of equity markets at the LSE for six years, and Niki Beattie, formerly the head of European markets at Merrill, had become independent directors.

Graham, who left the LSE in 2009, and Beattie, who quit Merrill in 2008, are the first non-Russians to sit on the MICEX-RTS board.