Ural division of Sberbank of Russia held a press briefing with INVEST United Financial Group executives speaking on the trends and challenges of Russian investment funds on May 15, 2007.

‘Sverdlovsk Region’s investment funds market, as well as that of Yekaterinburg in particular, is very promising. There are, for instance, quite a few federal players and a lot of local companies. We used to have only one Yekaterinburg-based partner in 2002, but this is not the case now. Sverdlovsk Region has a lot of potential in terms of both retail and business markets,’ SKB-Bank’s Securities Director Ilya Ovcharkin said. He also observed that seven of Yekaterinburg-based and 13 regional divisions of Sberbank offered its customers counseling services on investment funds.

‘Investment companies still have very few clients: no more than 300,000 people in the entire country. One good thing is that the number of provincial clients is on the increase: they used to make up 15% of the total number in 2005 but come to 40% of all clients today, and the figures keep growing. In addition, there are about 1.5 million potential clients in Russia today who are expected to actually start doing business with investment companies within the next 1.5 to 2 years,’ Igor Ryabov of INVEST United Financial Group says.