The share price of Uralskiy Krai (the unit investment trust run by Investstroy Management Company) went down by 18.94% (from 173,601.81 RUR to 145,958.12 RUR) between December 29, 2007 and January 31, 2008. These data are available from Investstroy’s official website.

'Uralsvyazinform’s apparent inability to get a loan can largely be explained by extraneous factors: after all, the liquidity crisis unfolds on a global scale, so Russian banks that used to get cheap resources abroad easily now have a very hard time getting them,’ Unicom Partner Investment Company’s Asset Management Director Sergei Kaliberda said to UrBC. In the meantime, the mobile operator started accepting applications from banks willing to offer them a loan on February 20, 2008. The company offered the potential creditors four 2.65-billion-ruble lots. The company has already had a

First Deputy Head of Sverdlovsk Region Government and Minister of Economics and Labor Mikhail Maximov was elected the new Chairman of Sverdlovsk Gubernskiy Bank’s Board of Directors. He actually succeeded Ms Galina Kovaleva, who had been appointed by the region’s government and had up to the summer of 2007 been First Deputy Head of Sverdlovsk Region Government.

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of loans given by Uralprivatbank to for-profit self-regulatory organizations for 1 to 3 years went down by 20.21% (from 217.128 million RUR to 173.242 million RUR) in December 2007-January 2008.

The value of net assets of Energy – Mixed Investments (the unit investment trust) managed by Eurogreen Management Company Ltd. went down by 1.4% between February 14, 2008 and February 15, 2008. According to Eurogreen’s website, the company’s net assets decreased from 3,093,749.87 RUR on February 14, 2008 to 3,050,377.87 RUR on February 15, 2008.

According to the Central Bank of Russia, volume of loans given by Bank24.ru to for-profit self-regulatory organizations for 31 to 90 days went down by 72% (from 12.5 million RUR to 3.5 million RUR) in December 2007-January 2008.

URSA Bank has recently launched the new version of www.ursabank.ru, the company’s official website, as part of the bank’s brand introduction strategy. Changes are mostly related to website’s design. The site now looks brighter, more spacious and lightsome and therefore corresponds with the bank’s working style and image much better, the bank’s press officer reports. The site developers were trying to make it as user-friendly as possible, taking into account the region-specific features and the symbolic dichotomy of the bank’s Siberian and Ural divisions. The website offers the bank’s

The volume of SKB-Bank’s net assets came to 29.48 billion RUR on February 1, 2008, which is 11.3 billion RUR better than a year earlier, while the bank’s loan portfolio increased by over 12 billion RUR and amounted to 18.67 billion RUR, the bank’s press officer reports. SKB-Bank managed to attract 26.15 billion RUR worth of investments (including 8.94 billion RUR worth of private individuals’ investments) by February 1, 2008. The bank thus does better than most regional bank and is, in fact, Sverdlovsk Region’s No.1 bank in terms of consumer loan volumes.

PriceWaterhouseCoopers, the international auditing company, announced it was going to set up an office in Yekaterinburg. The decision to this extent was made at PriceWaterhouseCoopers Auditing Department’s representative Stanley Ruth’s meeting with Deputy Mayor of Yekaterinburg Viktor Konteev. Mr. Konteev’s press officer reports the council is already looking for the suitable premises, and the company is planning to make a presentation on their activity to the local business community very soon. Mr. Ruth says PriceWaterhouseCoopers is planning to attract investments on the car parts market,

Uralprivatbank’s consumer loan portfolio decreased by .4% and came to 3,317,729,000 RUR in January 2008. These data are available from a report on the dynamics of consumer loan portfolio growth of the largest banks in Sverdlovsk, Chelyabinsk, and Tyumen Regions and Perm Territory in January 2008 to be found on Bank Severnaya Kazna’s official website.