Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin placed the budget merit for 2009-2011 to the region’s Legislative Assembly. The document covers the region’s basic taxation and budgetary policy directions and provides a preliminary three-year spending plan, the spokesperson for the Governor reports. The region’s budgetary policy is largely targeted at improving the people’s living standards. This is why the financial system is expected to keep the regional budget’s balance and facilitate the achievement of municipal budgets’ balances as well as to promote economic growth, enhance the population’s

Moscow, 11 August 2008 – UC RUSAL, the world’s largest aluminium and alumina producer, and RusHydro, the largest Russian renewable energy generating company, have announced the two-year results of their joint BEMO project, which includes the completion of the Boguchansky hydropower plant and the construction of a greenfield aluminium smelter in the Krasnoyarsk region. Since the beginning of the project, both companies have already invested over USD 1.8 billion, while it is expected to bring the total amount of expenditures by the end of 2008 to USD 2.6 bln. 65% of the investments were

Sverdlovsk Region’s division of Rosprirodnadzor (the state environmental watchdog) carried out a number of scheduled and unscheduled inspections of local companies and detected a number of water code violations, the spokesperson for Rosprirodnadzor reports. One case involves VSMPO-AVISMA Corporation based in Nizhnyaya Salda. Sverdlovsk Region’s division of Rosprirodnadzor ordered the company to eliminate the violation; besides, the enterprise will have to face administrative responsibility.

URSA Bank’s IT system was declared the fourth best among Russia’s major banks in 2007 in CNews Analytics’ annual rating. The rating of the country’s thirty largest banks’ IT systems was compiled by a number of banking experts, integrators, and vendors on the basis of more than fifteen criteria, including functionality, dependability, and scalability of systems responsible for automation of retail customer service, lending business, plastic card processing, and management reporting as well as for protection of information. ‘URSA Bank made a number of efforts aimed at improving its IT

Yekaterinburg-based Stroycomplex-2000 was blacklisted by the Federal Antimonopoly Service as a dishonest supplier for the company’s trying to avoid signing a contract, the Service’s official website states. Stroycomplex-2000 won a tender related to giving overhaul to the slate roofing of an apartment building in Gorkiy St., Monetniy, and was thus supposed to have signed a respective contract worth 199.879 million RUR. Nevertheless, the company backed out of the agreement later.

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of loans given by Bank Uralfinance to private individuals for 181 days to 1 year went down by 53.77% (from 6.269 million RUR to 2.898 million RUR) in January-July 2008.

According to the Central Bank of Russia, volume of loans given by UniCreditBank to private individuals for 91 to 180 days plummeted by 97.92% (from 128.385 million RUR to 2.670 million RUR) in January-July 2008.

Ural Airlines is already offering tickets for its international wintertime flights for sale, the company’s press officer reports. The winter timetable will still include flights to Milan and Hainan and two flights bound for the Middle East, namely, United Arab Emirates and Israel. Besides, more flights to Bangkok will be offered: the flight will be operated twice rather than just once a week throughout the whole winter until the end of March 2009. As flights to various European destinations are still very popular with tourists, Ural Airlines will offer its customers three flights a week to

‘We’ve just launched a new product for our business customers: the offer is targeted at large holdings and actually consists in using Metcombank as the company’s outsource for treasury management. This means the bank will deal in controlling the budgetary expenditures, managing the liquid assets within the holding, and financial administration,’ Metcombank’s Chairman Rustam Mamatov reports. ‘This is a ‘bulky’ and large-scale product, but we’ve got three big holdings using the product’s pilot version already. We are about to finish the trial run stage and are getting ready to launch the

URSA Bank was Russia’s fifteenth largest bank in terms of assets in the first half of 2008. This is a step forward compared to the bank’s 17th position in the rating of the country’s largest banks a year earlier. The bank’s assets have gone up by 23.2% since the beginning of the year and thus reached 220.03 billion RUR, thus securing the company the fourth best position in the rating based on the asset growth dynamics. The volume of deposit investments made by URSA Bank’s private customers reached 40.1 billion RUR in June 2008, which exceeded the figures for January 2008 by 12.7% and provided

SKB-Bank set up a new office in Tyumen Region: the outlet is located at 10 Lenin St. right in the heart of Yugorsk. The office welcomes both private customers and businesses from 9 AM to 6.30 PM on weekdays (and from 10 AM to 4 PM on Saturdays) and from 9 AM to 4 PM on weekdays, respectively. SKB-Bank now runs more than ninety subsidiaries in twenty different parts of Russia; the bank’s offices can be found anywhere between Irkutsk in the east and Kaliningrad in the west.

Baltika beer is now missing from quite a few of Yekaterinburg’s pubs and bars for reasons related not only to the product’s quality and market positioning but also to the fact that the supplier’s terms appear to be less advantageous than what their rivals offer. ‘We do not work with Baltika because we prefer to cooperate with suppliers who offer better terms,’ says Alexander Zhulanov, who runs Out sports bar. As a matter of fact, you will no longer find Baltika beer on the menu of many local cafes and bars. Moreover, the brand does not seem to be very popular even with customers of strong