‘There are plenty of locals, as well as dwellers of Moscow and Saint Petersburg (some high-ranking government officials among them), who’ve lost their money through the so-called Kalinichenko pyramid scheme,’ Director of NAUFOR’s (the National Association of Securities Market Participants) Ural branch Radik Akhmetshin announced in the course of a press conference on pyramid schemes and the state control over financial and investment institutions. ‘The last alleged location of Mr. Kalinichenko I’ve heard about was Cyprus or Italy; his mobile phone is turned off, his cottage in the vicinity of

Sberbank’s Ural branch keeps cooperating with more and more businesses and organizations whose services can be paid for through Sberbank’s ATMs and information stalls. To date, twenty-six organizations based in Sverdlovsk Region accept private individuals’ payments through Sberbank’s ATMs. This includes housing and phone bills, cable TV, natural gas supply, road police’s tickets, and much else besides. Moreover, the payment-maker can either use his or her international bank card or pay in cash using a self-service unit or a cash-accepting ATM. At the moment, Sberbank runs the region’s largest

Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Eduard Rossel chaired a meeting devoted to the region’s cooperation with Itera O&G Company. The meeting was attended by Itera’s Chairman Vladimir Makeev. One of the points on the meeting’s agenda was related to the local consumers’ three-billion-ruble debt. The housing maintenance and utilities services’ debt for natural gas consumption, for instance, has grown by over 1 billion RUR since last fall, the city of Nizhniy Tagil being Itera’s greatest debtor. The debt issue was initially considered at the Governor’s Social Security Council’s meeting in the fall

‘Frankly speaking, I wouldn’t publish an ad that promises a 195% increase in the share price in three years if I ran BrokerCreditService. This promise is partly true, but it is partly untrue as well. I’m not sure how the company did its calculations, but, in whichever case, any fund has both successful and less successful investors, all of whom invest in different things. BrokerCreditService could claim the figure denotes the profit the most successful investor would manage to make, while the less successful investors would make less or none,’ Director of NAUFOR’s (the National Association of

According to the National Managers’ League’s profitability ranking of unit investment trusts as of March 12, 2008, the share price of Alfa Capital Electroenergetica (Alfa Capital Management Company) has gone down by 10.64% since the beginning of 2008.

‘The fact that the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development bought our shareholding, an increase in the bank’s capital, and our actual growth dynamics have all contributed to SKB-Bank’s rating promotion,’ SKB-Bank’s Chairman Vladimir Pukhov said to UrBC. ‘For one, RusRating gave us BB- rather than the original B+, while Fitch Ratings affirmed our rating at B- (which is what most Moscow-based banks got as well) and Moody’s promoted us from B2, Stable Outlook to B2, Positive Outlook at the end of 2007,’ he added. ‘I believe our success is based on a few key factors. Firstly, we offer

‘It is possible after all that some of Yekaterinburg airport’s premises currently rented by Koltsovo airport will actually be transferred to some third party. The current state of events, with the airport run by a few parties that have no coordinated policy, dissatisfies the local authorities and the state, as well as the present owner. Yet, the likeliest thing to happen is that a new renting agreement will secure the rights of the present operator,’ says Aviaport Agency’s Analytics Director Oleg Panteleev. In the meantime, Rosimuschestvo filed a complaint with Sverdlovsk Region Court of

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of natural persons’ investments and deposits in Ural Innovational Commercial Bank valid for 181 days to 1 year went down by 6.52% (from 151.812 million RUR to 141.917 million RUR) in January-February 2008.

Yekaterinburg Municipal Duma Economic Development Committee members have recently been updated on how successfully the local strategic project on quality goods production was implemented in 2007, Duma’s press officer reports. For one, eighty-six furniture-making companies are currently operating in the city; these delivered to their customers nearly 2 billion RUR worth of products in January-September 2007, which is 1.5 times better than in January-September 2006. Besides, the businesses received more than 89 million RUR in terms of investments last year. ‘Even though the local producers were

Yekaterinburg Municipal Duma Economic Development Committee members have recently been updated on how successfully the local strategic project on quality foods production was implemented in 2007, Duma’s press officer reports. It was announced that Yekaterinburg’s 16 large food manufacturers and 70 small companies produced a total of over 17 billion RUR worth of foods in 2007, which exceeds the figures for a year earlier by 7.5%. At the same time, a number of manufacturers (the city’s flour milling and bakery plants, Confectionery Group SladCo, and Yekaterinburg Meatpacking Plant) experienced