1,127 crediting organizations with a total of 3,940 subsidiaries have been registered within Russia by June 1, 2008, the Central Bank’s official website states. This figure signals an ongoing tendency for the number of banks to go down: there were 1,129 banks with 3,492 subsidiaries in Russia as recently as May 1, 2008. At the same time, while the number of banks is on the decrease, the volume of their authorized capital keeps rising. The figure reached 780 billion RUR on June 1, 2008 compared with 775 billion RUR in May 2008 and 773 billion RUR in April 2008.


As for the distribution statistics, the figures have remained more or less the same. Sverdlovsk Region, for one, is a home to twenty-four banks, which is the best result throughout the country after Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Dagestan, and Tatarstan. Sverdlovsk Region-based banks are some of the most dynamic ones in terms of geographical expansion. SKB-Bank, for instance, runs its subsidiaries in eighteen different parts of Russia.