The 3d Russian Promissory Notes Congress was held in Yekaterinburg on October 3, 2008. The event was coordinated by SKB-Bank. ‘The choice of the location was brought about by such factors as Yekaterinburg’s impressive economic growth and its developed financial infrastructure as well as the upcoming Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit next year,’ the bank’s press officer reports. ‘The congress was a great success in Kazan in 2006 and in Samara in 2007, which means the country’s financial community is quite interested in this kind of securities,’ says Cbonds Marketing Director Olga

MOTIV Communications Group looked into the outcomes of its special summer offer known as Roaming Non Stop. The company reports their customers’ use of the mobile services abroad doubled in 2008 compared to a year earlier. At the same time, the use of the National Roaming service went up by 75% as well. Turkey was definitely the summer’s roaming leader, followed by Egypt, Spain, Italy, Greece, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan. MOTIV was able to significantly expand its roaming geographically in May through September, adding more than twenty new countries to its

Uralsvyazinform, the telecommunications provider, admitted that the company had violated the existing legislation on consumer rights protection, reports Egor Tomilov of Sverdlovsk Region’s division of Rospotrebnadzor (the state consumer rights watchdog). Rospotrebnadzor’s regional division received a complaint from Sverdlovsk Region’s division of the Federal Antimonopoly Service. The latter claimed Uralsvyazinform was forcing some of its customers to use certain tariff schemes. The antimonopoly agency found no antimonopoly law violations there but saw this as a violation of consumer rights

UralFinPromBank raised the interest rates on the consumer loans it offers by 1% to 1.5%. The interest rates thus now come to 21% to 22% a year, depending on the terms of the contract.

RSG Commercial Estate and Castorama, the French chain store, agreed that the latter’s hypermarket was going to become Retail Park’s anchor tenant in the near future. Retail Park is to be located in Yekaterinburg’s future Academic district and will probably be launched in 2011. The new district’s trade and business node will boast the area of 45,000 square meters where all kinds of goods and services meant for making one’s home a better and cozier place can be found. RSG and Castorama’s agreement states that the French company is to rent 12,200 square meters worth of shopping space for its

The Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development Finance (fully owned by its parent enterprise, the Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development) made 25.24 million RUR worth of coupon payments on their second bond issue’s ninth coupon. Each 1,000-ruble bond thus yielded its owner 31.16 RUR of profit, the spokesperson for the bank reports. The issuer determined the interest rates for the ninth, tenth, eleventh, and twelfth coupons at 12.5% a year, or 31.16 RUR per each 1,000-ruble bond. The coupon payments for the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth coupon periods will be made on January 1, 2009,

MegaFon, one of Russia’s major mobile operators, started selling iPhone 3G in Russia on October 3, 2008. The operator’s tariff schemes that are part of the iPhone 3G package include a certain amount of prepaid traffic (ranging between 500 MB and 5 GB). Customers willing to make a preliminary purchase application may do so via the company’s website (http://www.iphone.megafon.ru/). After you fill in the electronic form online, you are given a personal order number. The tariff schemes description is also available via MegaFon Ural’s website www.megafonural.ru or over the phone (the service

According to the Central Bank of Russia, volume of loans given by VUZ Bank to non-state for-profit organizations for up to 30 days went down by 64.64% (from 20.15 million RUR to 7.125 million RUR) in January-August 2008.

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of loans given by Sverdlovsk Gubernskiy Bank to non-state financial organizations for over 3 years dropped by 14.16% (from 464.310 million RUR to 398.538 million RUR) in January-August 2008.

‘One must admit that investing in unit investment trusts is not a very good idea at the moment. This market is currently not growing at all and is very volatile at the same time, so the trusts’ quotations have recently gone down,’ Otkrytiye Finance Corporation’s CEO Evgeniy Dankevitch said at a press conference devoted to setting up of the company’s office in Yekaterinburg. Otkrytiye actually comprises Otkrytiye Management Company that runs its own unit investment trusts; incidentally, these trusts’ profitability is currently below the inflation rate and some of them are even bringing nothing