SKB-Bank set up a new office in Cherkessk, the capital of Karachai-Cherkess. The bank’s press officer says the new office was designed to provide services to legal entities from 8.30 AM to 5.30 PM on weekdays. The office is located at 109 Mezhdunarodnaya St. This has become SKB-Bank’s southernmost representation, the press officer said to UrBC.

'It’s going to be very difficult for Maxi Group to break into the weldless pipe market, as it is saturated at the moment and the competition is quite fierce,’ a representative of Trubmetallkomplekt Ltd said to a UrBC reporter. 'There are three large weldless pipe makers in Sverdlovsk Region alone (one of them being Sinara Pipe Works), and plenty of intermediaries on top of that. This is why what Maxi Group wants to do is set prices that are lower than the current market ones. Otherwise their potential consumers simply won’t buy their produce, given that the quality of these goods is

According to the Central Bank of Russia, volume of loans given by Pervouralsk Joint Stock Commercial Bank to sole traders for 181 days to 1 year went down 78.7% (from 33.743 million RUR to 7.182 million RUR) in January-July 2007.

The regional division of Rostechnadzor (the state environmental, technological, and nuclear safety watchdog) inspected a number of hydraulic facilities at Malyshevskoye Rudoupravleniye, Nizhneserginskiy Hardware Plant, and VSMPO AVISMA Corporation on August 6-17, 2007. These inspections revealed 25 safety violations, Rostechnadzor’s local press officer reports. One problem is the absence of systematic control over the way the companies put away their effluents for safekeeping. The inspectors drew up two administrative offense reports, accusing certain authorities of failing to act

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of loans given by Gubernskiy Bank to state-owned for-profit organizations for 1 to 3 years went down by 29.1% (from 4.999 million RUR to 3.541 million RUR) in January-July 2007.

Ural Airlines operated its first restored scheduled flight from Yekaterinburg to Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, on August 18, 2007. The carrier’s press officer says, referring to Conde Nast Traveler, that Baku is ‘one of the twenty places one should see before they lose their historic looks‘. Experts predict putting up more new buildings downtown is bound to fully exterminate the city’s unique architectural ensemble in about a couple of decades. The flight is performed every Saturday using a TU 154 M aircraft, with the plane taking off from Yekaterinburg at 2 AM and arriving in Baku at 4

According to the Central Bank of Russia, volume of loans given by Universal Bank Ltd to non-profit NGOs for 91 to 180 days went down by 57.1% (from 24.5 million RUR to 10.5 million RUR) in January-July 2007.

Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Eduard Rossel signed a decree on his own vacation that is expected to last from August 20, 2007 to September 7, 2007. Head of Sverdlovsk Region Government Viktor Koksharov is going to be acting Governor while Mr. Rossel is away.

UralBusinessConsulting Agency of Information and Analytics is now co-operating with Factiva, the global information system that is run by American Dow Jones. The agreement to this extent was signed on August 20, 2007. The online newswire produced by UralBusinessConsulting Agency of Information and Analytics (both the Russian and the English versions) are now going to be available to Factiva subscribers. Factiva is the world’s leading supplier of business news and information as well as the supplier of services needed to broadcast or otherwise spread these news. Factiva is available in 22

VSMPO AVISMA’s revenues went down by 5% and thus amounted to 14.127 billion RUR in January-June 2007 (compared with 14.918 billion RUR a year earlier), the company’s mid-year report states. Their gross profit dropped by .4 billion RUR and reached 5.9 billion RUR, their sales profit decreased by .547 billion RUR and thus came to 4.393 billion RUR. The corporation’s net profit decreased from 3.654 billion RUR in January-June 2006 to 2.688 billion RUR in January-July 2007.