Ural Treasures Bank won two awards at a quality festival dedicated to banks’ lending practices and savings offers for private individuals. The event was coordinated by Quality Guarantee and Yekaterinburg Consumer Rights Committee, with some ten local banks competing in five different categories, namely: -the best consumer loan offer; -the best mortgage offer; -the best short-term savings offer; -the best medium-term savings offer; -the best long-term savings offer. Ural Treasures Bank presented three of its programs (Express Cash via Card, its mortgage lending scheme, and Vertical Success

‘The reasons for recent changes in the shares Uralfinprombank’s stockholders have in the bank’s authorized capital may vary. On the one hand, the bank proprietor might have decided to take a part of the money out of business to employ it elsewhere. On the other hand, this shuffling may have to do with some earlier agreements with the bank’s top executives: they might, for example, have a buying option and be thus encouraged to promote the business further,’ analyst of Finam Investment Bank Vladimir Sergievskiy said to UrBC. Anatoliy Pavlov decreased his share in Uralfinprombank’s authorized

The balance sheet total of Sberbank’s Ural branch rose by 47 billion RUR, or 14%, in the first quarter of 2008. The volume of the bank’s net assets has increased by 10% since the beginning of the year and reached 309 billion RUR on April 1, 2008. In addition, the bank’s net assets came to 2.5 billion RUR in January-March 2008, which is 1.7 times better than a year earlier. Sberbank’s Ural branch was able to improve on the lending and investment-collecting volumes as well. The bank’s loan portfolio, for instance, reached 275.8 billion RUR on April 1, 2008, loans to individuals went up by 7.2%

‘The official reason for Uralsevergas to apply for a loan with the Bank of Moscow was the need to build up on the company’s working assets,’ says the spokesperson for Uralsevergas (ITERA O& G Company’s daughter enterprise) Oleg Vlasov. The Bank of Moscow agreed to lend the company 400 million RUR for a term of eighteen months, the bank’s press officer reports. ‘Given the debts Uralsevergas failed to collect from Sverdlovsk Region’s consumers, the sum will probably be used to pay ITERA for the natural gas supplied. We need the loan to be able to get gas in the quantities we need and to get

The recent unlawful strike at Severouralsk bauxite mine (aka SUBR) is over now and all of the enterprise’s five mines are operating as usual, UC RUSAL’s press officer said to UrBC. ‘After we negotiated on meeting the terms of the Collective agreement and looked into ways of rising the pay through more effective management and enhanced labor productivity, all our employees resumed working,’ the company representative said. ‘Some parties and organizations’ strike-related proclamations are only a publicity stunt that has nothing to do with SUBR whatsoever,’ UC RUSAL reported.

According to the Central Bank of Russia, volume of loans given by UralTransBank to state-run for-profit organizations for 181 days to 1 year went down by 76.13% (from 1.466 million RUR to 350,000 RUR) in January-March 2008.

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of loans given by SberInvestBank to nongovernmental financial institutions for 1 to 3 years went down by 21.44% (from 20.8 million RUR to 15.775 million RUR) in January-March 2008.

Three Russian banks have finally merged with Kaliningrad-based Investbank (registration number 107); these are: Moscow-based Conversbank (registration number 122), Voronezh-based Voronezhprombank (registration number 562), and Yekaterinburg-based GRAN Commercial Bank (registration number 1125). The Central Bank of Russia has officially confirmed these banks’ liquidation and annulled GRAN Bank’s registration through order 2083900013041 on April 15, 2008.

Sverdlovsk Region Court of Arbitration will have to handle three cases on April 22, 2008: А60-5012/08 (plaintiff: the regional hygiene and epidemiology center; defendant: Yekaterinburg’s meatpacking plant), А60-221/08 (plaintiff: Rosgosstrakh-Ural; defendant: GAMMA Insurance Company, Severnaya Kazna Insurance Company), and А60-3990/08 (plaintiff: the region’s prosecution authorities; defendants: Sverdlovsk Region Ministry of State Property Management and Sverdlovsk Gubernskiy Bank).

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of loans given by Pervouralsk Joint Stock Commercial Bank to private individuals for 181 days to 1 year went down by 38.34% (from 30.327 million RUR to 18.7 million RUR) in January-March 2008.