Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) got some of the best positions in Metallosnabzheniye I Sbyt’s rating of Russian metallurgical enterprises. The magazine’s new issue featured the rating of these companies’ performance in the first half of 2008. Their assessment is based on the customers’ applications and a survey of marketing experts. The magazine reports they used criteria like shipments volume, services, quality of produce, and meeting one’s contractual obligations as well as the factors that have influenced the home market since the beginning of the year. MMK is still one of the

SKB-Bank is to raise the interest rates it offers on its ruble deposit types by 1% (compared with June 30, 2008) on August 1, 2008. The bank’s Deposit Operations Director Denis Belogurov says this new offer involves their World Standard and Gold Standard deposit schemes. ‘The summer season is coming to an end, and people usually get more active business-wise around this time of the year. This is why we decided to raise the interest rates, reacting partly to ongoing inflation rate growth and trying to keep to our levelheaded interest-setting policy at the same time. SKB-Bank last went through

Ural Transport Bank’s Board of Directors suggested that the shareholders should accept VEK’s proposal to buy the bank’s ordinary registered uncertified shares. VEK sent an obligatory notification to Uraltransbank, proposing to buy the bank’s 109,447,465 ordinary registered uncertified shares for 6.61 RUR apiece. The bank must accept the proposal or come up with its terms within seventy days of receiving this notification. This compulsory purchase procedure was guaranteed by Bank Severnaya Kazna. At the moment, the company’s majority shareholder is Valeriy Zavodov, who owns a 37.77%

The Seventh Court of Appeals looked into the appeal placed by URSA Bank and satisfied the company’s claim on July 28, 2008. Thus the court’s ruling did not support Novosibirsk Region Court of Arbitration’s decision made on May 29, 2008 and Novosibirsk Region’s division of Federal Antimonopoly Service’s provision made on March 31, 2008. The provision had to do with the administrative prosecution of URSA Bank for violating the advertising legislation. The Court of Appeals saw no violations of the existing legislation in the bank’s ads known as Numbers That Make You Happy and Visa Credit Card.

According to the Central Bank of Russia, volume of loans given by Uralfinance to private individuals for 181 days to 1 year dropped by 79.35% (from 165.524 million RUR to 34.166 million RUR) in January-June 2008.

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of private individuals’ deposits and other investments in VUZ Bank valid for 91 to 180 days went down by 25.05% (from 139.374 million RUR to 104.457 million RUR) in January-June 2008.