The Board took a decision on calling an extraordinary shareholders' meeting on August 29, approved its agenda, and determined the format of the meeting, absentee voting. It also approved the list of information to be made available to persons entitled to participation in the meeting. The date of making the list of persons entitled to participation in the meeting is set on July 21 (at close of business). The Board recommended to the Extraordinary Shareholders' Meeting to adopt a resolution on payment of dividends for the 1st half of the 2008 financial year in the amount of RUB 0.382

ROSNO, the insurance company, started making insurance payments to travelers who found themselves dumped by Detour on their vacations. The insurer is currently compensating those who’ve applied for an insurance indemnity and produced all the documents the federal legislation states are needed to prove a breach in contractual obligations and to estimate the damage done to the victim. ROSNO makes up for both the damage caused by the tour operator’s failing to provide a traveler with the necessary papers (tickets, travel pass, hotel reservations, etc), thus making it impossible for a customer to

According to the latest report on the performance of Sverdlovsk, Tyumen, and Chelyabinsk Regions and Perm Territory’s largest banks (available from Bank Severnaya Kazna’s official website), Yekaterinburg Municipal Bank’s own funds went down by 10.3% over the first six months of 2008.

Svyaz-Bank’s Yekaterinburg branch is going to resume offering car loans to its customers no sooner than August 2008, the bank’s call-center reports. One of the bank’s employees says the company’s stopped dealing in car loans for the time being due to the need to edit its automobile lending program.

‘The fact that the bank now turned into an open joint stock company is not likely to affect its market position in any way whatsoever. There are hundreds of close joint stock companies out there that keep developing successfully. Besides, Sverdlovsk Gubernskiy Bank is one of Russia’s Top 200 banks, so it would probably be an exaggeration to say that it cannot compete with some other organization,’ says Alexander Osin, Finam Management’s leading economist. Sverdlovsk Gubernskiy Bank has recently gone through with the official registration of a new type of a joint stock company, switching from

Chelyabinsk-based SOT, a company dealing in production of pipeline bends and part of Rimera (ChTPZ Group’s O&G maintenance division) has been successfully audited by American Petroleum Institute and proved the compliance of its quality management system with the API Specification Q1, API Specification 6H, and ISO/TS 29001 requirements. American Petroleum Institute (API) is the U.S. nongovernmental organization dealing in oil research and development of standards for enterprise’s produce and quality management systems. These standards are accepted in almost every country in the world and

Six electrolysis experts from UC RUSAL’s Ural smelter are going to celebrate the Metallurgist’s Day in Nigeria, where they have been assisting in the launch of a potline at RUSAL’s Alscon smelter for over a month now, the company’s spokesperson for the Urals Roman Lukichev said to UrBC. ‘The smelter sent its best experts to Nigeria; they are now helping the local workers to install modern bath tanks as well as doing some personnel training. Apart from the Ural smelter’s employees, the Nigerian workers are helped by experts from UC RUSAL’s Nadvoitskiy and Sayanogorskiy smelters,’ Lukichev

Talisman, a language training chain, announced they were going to raise prices by 30% to 40% in the fall. The chain’s director Natalia Sorokina says the price increase has been brought about by the general state of the market. ‘We don’t launch any price increases during the year, and our last academic year was no exception. In the meantime, though, the rent grew much more expensive. Besides, a shortage of skilled teachers makes it necessary to offer them better salaries. The price growth at the beginning of the season is a traditional thing, it’s just that this year it happens to be rather

The Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development offers better loan terms between July 16, 2008 and September 30, 2008. Any customer who gets a consumer loan or an express loan within this period will only have to pay a 12% annual interest rate. In addition, consumer loans can now be taken for a period of up to seven years (provided you find a guarantor for your loan), the bank’s press officer reports. What is more, the bank’s customers can now apply for a second loan while still paying back their first one. Borrowers with a nice credit record can apply for a consumer loan or an express loan

VIZ Stal reports Duferco Group has agreed to sell a 70% shareholding of Verkh-Isetskiy Metallurgical Plant. However, the transaction is still subject to further negotiations and will probably have been finalized by the end of the year.

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of loans given by UralFinPromBank to sole traders for 91 to 180 days went down by 70.83% (from 27.5 million RUR to 8.02 million RUR) in January-June 2008.

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin met heads of the region’s municipalities to discuss the performance of agricultural cooperatives in the region. The region’s Minister for Agriculture Ivan Feklin said there were twenty-one cooperatives in the area (and six new ones on the way) dealing in the purchases of milk, meat, potatoes, and vegetables. Some of them also processed the foods with machinery. Chairman of the local cooperatives community Josef Ashkinadze said they had a special development plan for 2008-2012, with focus on processing of foods. For one, ten meat-processing shops were