Sverdlovsk Region’s division of the Federal Antimonopoly Service keeps looking into the case involving Koltsovo Airport of Yekaterinburg, TNK BP Holding, and Ural Oil Company. These are suspected of violating Article 11 (part 1) of the law on the protection of competition through jet fuel wholesale price collusion. Because of their alleged actions, the prices are maintained at a certain level in Sverdlovsk Region and the assortment of RT and TS 1 fuel as well as the range of sellers to choose from remains the same. The original hearing of the case was interrupted in September 2008.

Vladimir Frolov, the Chairman of Bank Severnaya Kazna, announced in the course of a press conference in Yekaterinburg that he was no longer going to be in the banking business. ‘I’m planning on taking some rest this month and deciding on what I want to do in the future,’ he said. Meanwhile, Bank Severnaya Kazna’s controlling shareholding has recently been bought by Alfa Bank. Vladimir Frolov is reported to have had 22.49% of the bank’s shares. ‘We intend to make our product range consistent with that of Alfa Bank in the nearest future. Bank Severnaya Kazna will no longer operate

‘Our company has already started making the human resources more efficient, and we are planning on making about 10% of our staff redundant. Then, we’ll also have to switch to a one-shift mode, which is expected to eliminate all the additional expenses caused by having to pay for working extra hours,’ LSR Group’s General Director Igor Levit said in the course of his interview to Bloomberg and Reuters. ‘We are already cutting down on managerial and administrative expenses,’ he added. LSR Group runs enterprises and offices in several Russian Federation’s constituencies, including Sverdlovsk

The Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development holds a special offer for its bank card holders between December 1, 2008, and January 31, 2009. The offer is available in all the ten Russian regions and cities where the bank’s offices operate, that is, Sverdlovsk and Chelyabinsk Regions, Bashkortostan, Perm, Kirov, Saratov, Voronezh, Izhevsk, Orenburg, and Moscow. ‘Our bank cards are both a convenient way of making payments and a chance to get a nice gift. When one has a bank card issued by our bank, one gets a guaranteed 3,000-ruble money bonus transferred in one’s bank account (in case a

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of private individuals’ deposits and other investments in VUZ-Bank valid for 1 to 3 years dropped by 272 million RUR, or 11,77% (from 2,312,029,000 RUR to 2,039,797,000 RUR) in October 2008.