‘The mortgage lending market tends to be experiencing lowering demand, mainly due to sky-high prices,’ Anna Troyanovskaya, Existing Homes and Mortgage Director of Vostochnoye Real Estate Ltd., said to UrBC. Sverdlovsk Region’s banks provided their clients with 1,161 mortgage loans (which is 3.25 times better than in 2005) worth 1.068 billion RUR (five times better than in 2005) in January-June 2006. Only 52 mortgages were issued last January, whereas as many as 361 (worth nearly 355 million RUR) were issued in June 2006. As regards the period of January to October 2006, the local banks gave

‘The trustee in bankruptcy’s report on HydroSpetsStroy Ltd. (general contractor of Noviy Grad, the local developer) will be presented in Sverdlovsk Region Court of Arbitration on March 15, 2007. I expect the court hearing to be quite productive, as there appear to be no problems left by now,’ says Olga Rushitskaya, the company’s trustee in bankruptcy. ‘There used to be some procrastination as the claim of one of the creditors (Pantheon Ltd.) was left unanswered, but the issue has already been dealt with. The thing is, this claim was not laid in compliance with all the legal requirements

West-Siberian Metallurgical Industrial Complex (part of Evraz Group) won in Russia’s Top 100 Enterprises contest in the Environment and Environmental Management category. The company’s Managing Director Rashid Nugumanov was awarded with the honorary decoration of Conservationist of the Year 2006, reports the spokesperson for Evraz Group. Over 400 enterprises based in 50 Russian regions applied for the competition, and 160 of them made it to the final tour; then, the ‘golden hundred’ was selected based on how successful the companies were in their conservational activity: whether they managed

Russian Copper Company and Ausmelt Limited have successfully launched a new copper-smelting plant that is based in Karabash, Chelyabinsk Region, and is going to employ Ausmelt technologies, reports the spokesperson for Russian Copper Company. The plant is expected to process 550,000 tons of copper concentrate a year; its smelting furnace is capable of producing 90,000 tons of blister copper annually. This has become Ausmelt’s first project in Russia, with construction completed and the furnace launched in October 2006. The company’s experts left the site in December 2006, and the plant has

Delovoi Kvartal magazine has recently published a report on the local consulting services market. The management consulting market went up 33% last year, with greatest growth figures in the fields of quality management, logistics, and production management. According to the magazine, Traectoria Rosta Ltd ended up being the ninth on Yekaterinburg’s Top 10 consulting firms list. ‘Medium-scale businesses’ demand for the integrated management systems based on international standards is ever-increasing. The products we offer make it possible to set up a single system that will deal with all the

Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Eduard Rossel met president of Itera (an oil and gas company) Igor Makarov in Moscow on March 12, 2007. The meeting was devoted to the results and future potential of the regional government’s cooperation with the company. Mr. Makarov said Itera was going to keep up with all the investment projects they had discussed. Itera intends to invest 4.74 billion RUR in putting up a number of buildings and facilities in Sverdlovsk Region in the near future. It was agreed in the course of the meeting that Eduard Rossel would take part in the company’s Board meeting in

Metallurgical Industrial Complex of Novokuznetsk (part of Evraz Group) held the Modern Woman 2007 contest at the beginning of March. There were six employee participants as well as workers of Metallurgical Equipment Repairing Plant (ZRMO Ltd.), EvrazEC Ltd., and Stal-NK Ltd., reports the spokesperson for Evraz Group. The final tour of the contest included three tasks: presenting My Element, a role play about the Woman Mystery, and Cherchez la Femme competition. All the participants won the completion, each in her respective category; Vitalia Pshonkina, Maria Kosykh, and Tatiana Artemieva (all

The campaign aimed at fighting economic crimes that was launched by the Department of Internal Affairs and the public prosecution authorities of Ural Federal District resulted in charging the director of state-owned Electrohimpribor (based in the town of Lesnoy, Sverdlovsk Region) with mercenary crimes and large-scale theft, reports the spokesperson for the public prosecution authorities of Ural Federal District. The accused is believed to have stolen over 1.4 million RUR through signing fictitious agreements about providing non-existent information services on behalf of the company; the

‘We used to use Bank URALSIB’s car loan schemes, but we had to give this up since they have no competitive advantages any longer, while their interest rates exceed the market figures,’ says Sergey Rzhevskiy, the lending expert of Toyota Center auto show. ‘When deciding on a car loan scheme, we are trying to look for a moderate interest rate without hidden additional payments and commissions and for the banks that would treat our clients nicely and only ask for a reasonable amount of documents to be collected,’ Mr. Rzhevskiy says. ‘Bank URALSIB does not demand that the customer provide any

Sverdlovsk Region Government approved of the changes made to the land management legislation regarding regional property. Three major changes have been made so far: firstly, the right of the executive branch to give permission to privatize or use the regional property and the way this is to be done will now be decided upon in a new format (Regulation 317); secondly, the way the representatives of the executive branch are to deal in auctions has been modified as well (Regulation 543); thirdly, the authority over agricultural lands is to be determined differently (Regulation 737). All the