The agenda of this year’s Cannes film festival included United Vodka tasting contest as usual. This is Europe’s largest and most prestigious contest founded by United Vodka & Spirits association in Belgium in 2000. The contest aims to unite vodka and strong drink manufacturers in their efforts to promote their best brands on the new markets. Over 600 vodka brands take part in the event every year. This year’s event was attended by companies from Belgium, Germany, Sweden, France, Russia, Ukraine and many other countries. Some old-time vodka technologists as well as young experts and the

‘The talks about the need to increase the recovery amount for people with bank deposits come in good time and sound like a good idea. The European banks, for instance, pay their depositors about ?20,000 in case of an insured event. The sum proposed for Russian banks, that is, 600,000 RUR, approaches this standard quite closely. On average, people have been depositing much more money in the banks lately compared to a few years ago, so raising the recovery amount for their deposits seems logical,’ SKB-Bank’s Deposit Operations Director Denis Belogurov said to UrBC. The idea to raise the sum

Yekaterinburg is currently hosting the 3d All-Russian Private Banking/Russia 2008 conference. ‘We hope that the conference will give a chance to all the participants to get the answers to their questions and to find solutions to all the problems that hinder private banking development in this country at the moment,’ Chair of Ural Banking Union Valentina Muranova said at the opening ceremony. The conference began with reports made by the Russian Academy of Public Service under the President of the Russian Federation’s leading expert Alexei Gusev, Estonia-based Sampo Bank’s Senior Investment

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of for-profit self-regulatory organizations’ deposits in Perviy Respublikanskiy Bank valid for 1 to 3 years went down by 78.47% (from 16.514 million RUR to 3.554 million RUR) in January-April 2008.

The construction of a business center and a mall in Koltsovskiy highway, Yekaterinburg, still hasn’t begun. In the meantime, these buildings are part of the preparation program for the next year’s Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Yekaterinburg. Point & Co’s First Deputy GD Yuri Tsepernyat explained in the course of a meeting at Sverdlovsk Region’s government house that they were currently busy re-designing the buildings. ‘We had to do this because of the local farmers. We did manage to buy a few nearby land allocations and turn them into two four-hectare construction sites, but

‘Renova-StroyGroup’s Academic construction project can serve as a paragon of professionalism for all the other builders,’ Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Eduard Rossel said in the course of a meeting at Sverdlovsk Region’s government house on May 28, 2008. During the meeting, the Governor was shown some real-time video broadcasts from the construction site. According to the project manager Stanislav Pridvizhkin, everything is being put up in accordance with the schedule. Eduard Rossel suggested that the region’s Construction Minister Alexander Karlov should coordinate a professional development

The construction of Antey Trade Center’s third section (a forty-five-storey building in Krasnoarmeyskaya-Malyshev St. in Yekaterinburg) has been halted once again. Antey’s Director Andrei Gavrilovskiy reported in the course of a meeting at Sverdlovsk Region’s government house that the trade center’s management had been trying in vain to get the lease agreement approved of by the region’s authorities for forty-five days already. Prior to this, Ural Federal District’s division of Rostechnadzor (the state environmental, technological, and nuclear safety watchdog) inspected the construction site

Demidov Business Center is being put up in one of Yekaterinburg’s streets in full accordance with the schedule; however, a number of problems have recently made the process more complicated, Director of KlaasStroy Mars Sharafulin announced in the course of a meeting at Sverdlovsk Region’s government house. The business center in question is one of the buildings that have to be completed by the beginning of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit that is to take place in Yekaterinburg next year. Mars Sharafulin reports Yekaterinburg transport and traffic committee is not prepared to

According to the Central Bank of Russia, volume of private individuals’ deposits in Uralfinance Bank valid for 181 days to 1 year went down by 25.4% (from 340.664 million RUR to 254.134 million RUR) in January-April 2008.

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of for-profit self-regulatory organizations’ deposits in UralTransBank valid for 181 days to 1 year went down by 48.76% (from 119.922 million RUR to 61.446 million RUR) in January-April 2008.