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.

RichBrokerService Board of Directors decided to call an extraordinary general meeting on September 16, 2008. On August 14, 2008, the Federal Financial Market Service annulled the company’s licenses entitling them to dealership and brokerage operations as well as portfolio management. The decision was taken after RichBrokerService had violated the existing securities legislation and the law on prevention of money-laundering and financing of terrorist activity several times during one year.

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of for-profit self-regulatory organizations’ deposits in Pervouralsk Joint Stock Commercial Bank valid for 1 to 3 years went down by 76% (from 10 million RUR to 2.4 million RUR) in January-July 2008.

TGK-9, one of Sverdlovsk Region’s major power suppliers, refused to meet its contractual obligations imposed by the multilateral joint liability agreements it signed with Sverdlovenergo and Permenergo. The company’s report for the second quarter of 2008 states TGK-9 and Permenergo signed a multilateral joint liability agreement in November 2006. In 2007, a similar agreement was signed with Sverdlovenergo. According to the report, the company’s share of responsibility came to 66.51% and 60.76% in the agreements with Permenergo and Sverdlovenergo, respectively. Later on, both Permenergo and

The Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development was given the leading positions on Delovoy Kvartal magazine’s list of professional securities market participants, the bank’s press officer reports. The Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development, with its total securities market turnover of 409.7 billion RUR, was Sverdlovsk Region’s No.1 in the first half of 2008. The better part of the bank’s turnover resulted from the company’s dealership and brokerage operations. ‘Despite the market’s instability, our customers grow more and more interested in independent investment, which is why the

‘We’ve been faced with a number of tasks that we are dealing with quite successfully now. Some of them have to do with some rather abstract notions like the ‘taste’ and the ‘scent’ of the area, and this is where our efforts are concentrated. This task is a bit hard to put into words, but the idea behind all this is to make Yekaterinburg’s future district unique, to make sure it has an original and individual image and a special atmosphere,’ says Renova-StroyGroup-Akademicheskoye’s General Director Stanislav Pridvizhkin. ‘We have already devised a kind of the district’s special ‘philosophy’,

Interfax-Center for Economic Analysis (Interfax-CEA) came up with the ranking of Russia’s top 100 largest banks in terms of asset volume as of June 30, 2008. Seven banks based in Ural Federal District, including SKB-Bank, were featured in the ranking for the first half of 2008. Three of them are located in Sverdlovsk Region, another three are located in Tyumen Region, and one bank is based in Chelyabinsk Region. The Center’s research has shown that all the seven banks managed to raise the volume of their assets over the first six months of 2008. Interfax-CEA analysts report SKB-Bank’s assets

Ural Airlines came up with a performance report for January-July 2008 and for the seventh month of the year. The airline’s aircraft operated 7,091 flights between January 1, 2008 and July 31, 2008, which was 16% better than a year earlier; the figures include 2,286 international flights (57% more than in January-July 2007), 4,115 domestic flights (1% more than in January-July 2007), and 616 flights within the CIS (27% more than in January-July 2007). 1,352 flights were operated by the company in July 2008 (which was 9% better than a year earlier), including 551 international flights, 676

‘Ural Treasures Bank has been working with various businesses in the field of salary schemes for several years now. The schemes were primarily designed in such a way as to be affordable for businesses (that is, the employers) and convenient and advantageous for the bank card users (that is, the employees who’d get their salaries transferred into these bank card accounts),’ Ural Treasures Bank’s department director Maria Eremeeva said to UrBC. The executive reports the commission the bank takes for transferring people’s salaries into the bank card accounts is only a third of what is charged

According to the Central Bank of Russia, volume of loans given by Tagilbank to borrowers despite overdraft dropped by 26.75% (from 2.628 million RUR to 1.925 million RUR) in January-July 2008.

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of private individuals’ deposits and other investments in Ural Innovational Commercial Bank valid for 181 days to 1 year went down by 23.12% (from 151.812 million RUR to 116.712 million RUR) in January-July 2008.