It is no longer profitable for the users of United Billing Office to pay their housing bills through Sberbank, reports the spokesperson for the office. Since January 2007, the local offices of Sberbank have been taking a 3% commission on the bill-paying operation; this has already resulted in numerous complaints, as people were not informed about the charge.

Moody's Investors Service, the international rating agency, classed Russian and foreign currency deposits of Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development as having a long-term B3 rating, a short-term Not-Prime (NP) rating, and gave the bank the E+ rating in terms of financial stability. In the meantime, Moody's Interfax Rating Agency granted the company a long-term Baa2.ru rating on the national scale. The agency says the bank’s leadership in Sverdlovsk and Chelyabinsk Regions has supported its financial stability rating. Given the region’s rapid development and the company’s ties

Ural Airlines looked at the results of their activity in 2006. The carrier serviced 1,012,037 passengers last year, which exceeds the figures for 2005 by 11%. What is more, the company transferred its millionth passenger within a year: the last time it happened was only in 1998, prior to the national banking crisis. Getting past this point means the carrier is now one of the largest federal airlines, since only 9 out 199 Russian air carriers manage to attract more than a million passengers a year (these are Aeroflot, S7, Transaero, and some others). The above-mentioned 11% increase in the

Alexei Vorobiev, Head of Sverdlovsk Region Government, conducted a Cabinet meeting on January 29, 2007. The meeting was devoted to the report on the region’s economic and social development in 2006 presented by Sverdlovsk Region Ministry of Economy and Labour. The region’s GDP reached the point of 600bn RUR in 2006, which exceeds the figures for 2005 by 8%. Industrial production went up 7%, with machine-building industry output growing by over one-third. Sverdlovsk Region attracted more than 120bn RUR worth of investments last year, of which $1.36bn came from foreign investors (which is 25%

Following the Provision made by the Bank of Russia regarding informational transparency, URSA Bank has announced that it is going to issue 10,000,000 unconvertible certificated bearer bonds with face value of 1,000 RUR each. The public subscription will be handled by MICEX. The Board of Directors made the decision to issue 10bn RUR worth of securities on January 26, 2007. The bonds will be retired at face value on the 2548th day of initial offering. The last coupon period payments are provided. URSA Bank is the result of the recent merger of two large banks based in Siberia and the Urals.

Following the Provision made by the Bank of Russia regarding informational transparency, URSA Bank has announced today that it is going to issue 5,000,000 interest-bearing unconvertible certificated bearer bonds with face value of 1,000 RUR each. The public subscription will be handled by MICEX. The Board of Directors made the decision to issue 5bn RUR worth of securities on January 26, 2007, says the bank’s press officer. The bonds will be retired at face value on the 1820th day of initial offering. The last coupon period payments are provided. URSA Bank is the result of the recent merger of

The report on the state of the environment and the way environmental factors affect the health of Sverdlovsk Region population indicates that A. K. Serov Metallurgical Plant (part of Ural Mining and Metallurgical Company (UMMC)), with its 54.5% share of all atmospheric emissions in the town of Serov, Sverdlovsk Region, is the town’s major air polluter. Serov-based enterprises that emit gases without recycling them first have dumped 52,184 tons of pollutants altogether.

‘Home Credit and Finance Bank Ltd. hasn’t produced any proof of complying with the Central Bank of Russia requirements on consumer loan transparency at the request of Federal Antimonopoly Service. Presenting the data on compliance can actually only be done voluntarily, and, so far, only ninety-one banks dealing in consumer lending have agreed to do so,’ Counselor to Deputy Head of Federal Antimonopoly Service Marina Saranskaya said to UrBC representative. People living in the Urals have been placing more complaints regarding poor banking services lately. In most cases, the complaints have to

According to the report on the state of the environment and the way environmental factors affect the health of Sverdlovsk Region population, Uralvagonzavod raised its harmful atmospheric emissions by 126 tons. Eighteen Sverdlovsk Region-based enterprises have increased the number of emissions altogether.

The damage sustained by Severnaya Kazna Insurance Company in terms of obligatory car insurance came to 81.49% in 2006, which exceeds the figures for 2005 by .9%. The total damage of the company amounted to 70.93% against 67.55% a year earlier; the damage sustained in terms of voluntary insurance came to 64.18% (compared to 58.55% in 2005).

Vysokogorskiy Ore Mining and Processing Enterprise (part of Evraz Group) won the first prize in the regional energy-saving contest held among the largest industrial enterprises, reports the spokesperson for Evraz Group. The experience of the company’s experts who have been successfully introducing the energy-saving technologies there was particularly praised in the letter of thanks prepared by Sverdlovsk Region Government. The engineers of Vysokogorskiy Ore Mining and Processing Enterprise designed a long-term energy-saving investment program in 2006. So, within the next five years, the

MegaFon Ural, the mobile operator, is going to present its new offers for businesses at the IT and Communication Exhibition. The presentation will cover the advantages of using MegaFon as the corporate operator as well as remote object management and pocket office options. The event will take place in the conference room of Exhibition Center located at 12 Sevastopolskaya St. in Tyumen at noon on January 30 and at 2 PM on January 31, 2007.

‘The damage sustained by Sverdlovsk Region-based insurers in terms of obligatory car insurance came to 61.8% in nine months of 2006, which exceeds the damage of an average Russian car insurer by 1.24 times,’ says Alexander Nikitin, Head of the Ural representation of Russian Union of Insurers.

‘Insurance frauds are partly connected with the unscrupulous actions of the employees of insurance companies. Four people from Severnaya Kazna were involved in criminal suits last year; sentences have already been pronounced on three of them. All of the accused had been working in the company for at least two years before the proceedings began; they kept receiving praise for their good work and used to be paragons of effective performance,’ Alexander Merenkov, the General Director of Severnaya Kazna, the insurance company, announced at the conference devoted to car insurance frauds.

‘Even though we use almost all kinds of cars for cartage, we don’t use Ural automobiles, the spokesperson for Ural-Eurotransit said to UrBC representative. ‘This is a very peculiar car that can be used for intraregional trips but not for long-distance or international ones because of a whole range of technical reasons,’ the spokesperson said.

A new office of URSA Bank was opened in Achinsk, Krasnoyarsk Territory, on January 24, 2007. This office (referred to as Achinskiy additional office) is the first subdivision of the bank’s Krasnoyarsk subsidiary to be set up in 2007. The representatives of the legislature, entrepreneurs, small and medium-scale businesspersons attended the event. The symbolic ribbon-cutting ceremony was performed by the Director of Krasnoyarsk subsidiary Dmitriy Ganushkin and Head of the municipal deputy council Nikolai Trickman. Mr Ganushkin said he hoped the new office would be the year’s champion not only

Federal Antimonopoly Service declared the advertisement of Perviy Tariff by MTS, the mobile operator, unlawful, as it violated Article 5 (Part 7) of the Federal Advertising Law, and ordered the company to stop violating. The ad ran as follows: ‘The new Perviy Tariff. All the ingoing calls cost $0, a minute costs $.07’ accompanied by a phrase in almost illegible print that this meant the price of an outgoing call to a mobile or landline phone based in the subscriber’s region of residence if the caller was using his or her home network. What is more, the price did not cover the connection fee.

The average existing home prices (per square meter of dwelling) in the center of Yekaterinburg (i.e. in Moskovskaya St., Chelyuskintsy St., Vostochnaya St., Dekabristy St., Belinskiy St., and Bolshakov St.) went up 2.19% on January 23, 2007, compared with December 26, 2006, reports the Analytical Department of the Ural Chamber of Real Estate. The figure rose by 2.29% in Yekaterinburg’s most expensive residential area (Avtovokzal, Yugo-Zapadniy, Parkoviy, Botanicheskiy, Vtuzgorodok, Shartashskiy, ZhBI – downtown and the south-west and the south-east of the city), by 2.15% in the city’s second

Yekaterinburg is Russia’s third largest buyer of Russian and foreign cars; it also hits second in terms of number of cars per 1,000 dwellers. There are 365,000 cars in Yekaterinburg at the moment, or 236 cars per 1,000 dwellers, reports the spokesperson for the city council. 129 garages, 124 car washes, and 62 service stations are now available in the city, and the number of car washes is expected to increase to 200 by 2008.

The Bank of Russia issued an order that makes all commercial banks fully reveal the information on the real cost of the consumer loans they offer starting July 1, 2007. At the same time, the Supreme Court supported Rospotrebnadzor, the state consumer rights watchdog, in their claim that the extra commission for servicing a consumer loan must be made illegal. According to Federal Antimonopoly Service, Russia’s consumer lending leaders increased their profits by one and a half to two times by hiding the actual interest rates. The annual interest rate of Russian Standard Bank, for instance,