Krasnaya Shapochka mine belonging to United Company RUSAL’s Severouralsk bauxite mine (SUBR) underwent the annual multipurpose industrial safety examination by Rostechnadzor (the state environmental, technological, and nuclear safety watchdog). The inspectors looked into the enterprise’s documents, checked the company’s compliance with the surface work and subsurface mining technologies, and tested the workers’ knowledge of the necessary emergency actions and labor protection requirements. Each site on the mine’s premises had been inspected for at least a day. Chief state inspector Oleg

‘The state invested some $121bn in the U.S. mortgage agencies’ bonds at the beginning of the year. Less than $50bn is left of this now, which means we’ve spent about $70bn, while the ROI only came to $1bn, or approximately 1.5%. The profit of 1.5% to 2% a year is nothing to be proud of; these investments turned out to be even less lucrative than the agencies’ bonds themselves: these yielded about 4.5% a year in 2007,’ says Accord Invest’s Deputy GD Konstantin Selyanin. During his conference with the State Duma’s Spravedlivaya Rossiya group, Deputy Head of Russian Federation Government and

Rus Rating came up with the Russian banks’ credibility rating as of August 14, 2008. SKB-Bank’s rating was confirmed at BB-, with the Stable rating outlook. The rating agency’s experts explain the bank’s nice rating results from SKB-Bank’s good growth rate, great developmental potential, and extensive subsidiary network, the bank’s press officer reports. Rus Rating believes SKB-Bank can also boast an ample customer base consisting of large and medium-scale enterprises; what is more, the bank has been able to win and retain an impressive share of Sverdlovsk Region’s market and aspires to

Vladivostok Avia’s Board of Directors decided to set up the company’s representations in Yekaterinburg, Sverdlovsk Region, and Kemerovo, Kemerov Region.

A round table discussion on crisis management through public relations was coordinated in Yekaterinburg by the local division of Russia’s Corporate Media Association, OPTIMA COMMUNICATION, Mayor’s Library, and UralBusinessConsulting Agency of Information and Analytics. The discussion was moderated by UralBusinessConsulting’s General Director, economic and political PR consultant, and Russian PR Association Fellow Evgeniy Potapov. In his opening address, Evgeniy Potapov said there were no clear-cut and generally accepted crisis PR theories at the moment, so people involved in the field just

Hungarian Consulate-General in Yekaterinburg has been entitled to issuing Schengen visas to Latvia beginning from August 15, 2008 after the corresponding bilateral agreement was signed by the Republic of Hungary and the Republic of Latvia’s governments. ‘The list of documents the applicants must provide for their Schengen visas to Latvia and the consular fees are exactly the same as the ones you need to submit and pay to enter any country of the Schengen area,’ the spokesperson for the Ministry for International and Foreign Economic Relations of Sverdlovsk Region reports.

Mechel will have to pay 5% of its turnover, or 790 million RUR, in fine after having been found guilty of violating the legislation on the protection of competition on the baking coal market, says Head of the Russian Federation Federal Antimonopoly Service Igor Artemiev. ‘The Federal Antimonopoly Service completed the case involving the company’s activity on the baking coal market. Tomorrow, the enterprise will receive the administrative violation report comprising both orders and sanctions,’ Igor Artemiev notes. ‘Mechel was rather cooperative when it came to the Federal Antimonopoly

According to the Central Bank of Russia, volume of private individuals’ deposits in UniCreditBank valid for 31 to 90 days dropped by 62.04% (from 2,264,783,000 RUR to 859,703,000 RUR) in January-July 2008.

URSA Bank offered a credit line worth 350 million RUR to Chelyabinsk-based Stroytek. The offer will be valid for five years; the borrower intends to spend the money on refinancing the expenses occasioned by the construction of Holiday Inn Chelyabinsk-Riverside Hotel. Stroytek is both the general contractor for the project and the hotel’s proprietor. At the moment, the company is negotiating with the Holiday Inn trademark owners for the construction of an extension to the hotel. Holiday Inn Chelyabinsk-Riverside is a member of Holiday Inn international chain consisting of over 1,500 hotels and

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of loans given by UralFinPromBank to private individuals for 1 to 3 years went down by 19.48% (from 256.842 million RUR to 206.788 million RUR) in January-July 2008.