‘UC RUSAL’s Severouralsk bauxite mine (SUBR) was supposed to switch to a four-day working week early in February 2009; however, on second thought, the enterprise’s management decided to wait, since it turned out that the public prosecution authorities had been rather alarmed by this news. In fact, the order to this extent really was not formalized in accordance with all the existing regulations. For one, the employer failed to inform the workers about the change in their working conditions two months in advance (as the rules state). This is why, as far as I know, the prosecution authorities

The amount of money kept in VUZ-Bank’s customers’ settlement accounts went down by 66.094 million RUR (from 646.229 million RUR to 580.135 million RUR) last December. These data are available from Bank24.ru’s official website featuring a report on the performance of Sverdlovsk Region’s banks.

‘The construction of the new international flights terminal is almost finished, so the terminal will probably have been launched by the end of March 2009. By this time, the architectural finish of the control tower will have been completed as well. As for the equipment, the delivery and assembly jobs are to begin in May,’ Yekaterinburg-based Koltsovo Airport’s General Director Kirill Shubin announced at a meeting devoted to special construction projects monitored by Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Eduard Rossel. ‘However, while Yekaterinburg is hosting the Shanghai Cooperation Organization

Moskommerzbank Commercial Bank decided to close down its subsidiaries based in Ural Federal District. These include the bank’s offices in Tyumen and Chelyabinsk. So, Moskommerzbank no longer runs any subsidiaries in Ural Federal District.

‘Sverdlovsk Region is not going to enter The Industrial Urals-The Polar Urals (a corporation created to support the industrial development of the Urals’ north). Joining this corporation would actually be illegitimate, because the procedure still needs a special legislature to support it; we need to make sure there isn’t going to be any trouble later,’ Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Eduard Rossel said in the course of a press conference in Yekaterinburg. As it happens, the Governor had said earlier that Sverdlovsk Region was not going to provide any financing of The Industrial Urals-The Polar

When asked by Nezavisimaya Gazeta, the Economic News Agency came up with its political influence rating of Russian entrepreneurs and investors in the last quarter of 2008. The country’s Top 50 most influential businesspeople were selected by a group of fifty-seven experts among 108 candidates on the basis of a zero to five scale (where zero to one would stand for minimum influence, one to two would stand for insignificant influence, two to three would stand for average influence, three to four would stand for strong influence, and four to five would stand for very strong influence. Viktor

Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works’ (MMK) fifth plate mill shop is going to raise its production output in February 2009. The shop has had to cut back on the output earlier because of the macroeconomic difficulties; besides, some of the workers were busy constructing Mill 5000, but they are expected to go back to their usual workplaces in a month’s time, Magnitogorskiy Metall reports. ‘Starting February, we are going to intensify our production program. For one, we intend to produce 71,000 tons of cold-rolled metal. There is no risk of goods getting over-stored, because we know we’ll have to

Bank24.ru reports the charges for servicing private customers have been changed. Starting February 1, 2009, the interest paid on a private individual’s foreign currency account balance will come to 1% a year for U.S. dollar accounts (against 10% a year that used to be paid on these account types earlier).

Parkridge Holdings had to give up on the idea of putting up a 150,000-square-meter storehouse in Yekaterinburg and is now halting its planned expansion in the Russian regions, Vedomosti reports. The company announced at the end of 2007 that they were negotiating for a purchase of a thirty-hectare land allotment in Yekaterinburg. The allotment was intended for a large 150,000-square-meter storage facility. ‘We did negotiate for buying a land allotment in town, but the first signs of an economic crisis became obvious as early as last summer, for the price of both allotments and construction

All of SKB-Bank’s major development indicators showed some rather impressive growth dynamics in 2008. For one, the bank’s asset volume went up by 10 billion RUR and thus exceeded 39.8 billion RUR altogether. Then, SKB-Bank’s lending portfolio rose from 19.3 billion RUR to 27.9 billion RUR. By January 1, 2009, private customers had entrusted SKB-Bank with over 13.7 billion RUR worth of deposits (compared with only 8.6 billion RUR on January 1, 2008). What is more, after the bank went through with an additional share issue, the company’s stock capital increased up to 1,822,775 million RUR,

Bank Severnaya Kazna’s Board of Directors decided to close down the bank’s subsidiaries in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Tyumen, and Perm. The decision was taken during a meeting held on January 27, 2009.

Bank Severnaya Kazna offered its customers 2,367,976,000 RUR less worth of loans in December 2008 compared with the previous month. In November 2008, the bank’s lending volume reached 27,118,929,000 RUR, whereas by January 1, 2009, the figure dropped down to 24,754,962,000 RUR. Bank Severnaya Kazna was sold to Alfa-Bank at the end of November 2008. The former was reported to have experienced grave liquidity problems at that moment.

‘The unfolding global economic crisis that broke out in the last quarter of 2008 resulted in the dropping demand for steel produce and therefore plummeting prices. Therefore Novolipetsk Iron & Steel Works (NLMK) and NLMK Group’s major enterprises did less impressively in terms of output last year compared with 2007,’ says the spokesperson for Novolipetsk Iron & Steel Works. The enterprise produced 1.367 million tons of cast iron in October-December 2008, which was 38.8% less than in July-September 2008; then, their steel, slab, hot-rolled iron, and cold-rolled iron output reached

Bank Severnaya Kazna’s return on equity plummeted by 40% in December 2008. According to the available data, the bank’s ROE was estimated at -1% in November 2008 and at -41% by January 1, 2009. Then, the bank’s return on assets was assessed at -3.5% on January 1, 2009 against -.1% in November 2008. All the data are available from Bank24.ru’s official website featuring a report on the performance of Sverdlovsk Region’s banks on January 1, 2009. As a matter of fact, the decrease in the bank’s profitability became obvious after Bank Severnaya Kazna had been bought by Alfa-Bank.

Bank Severnaya Kazna’s funds decreased by 1,024,876,000 RUR in December 2008 compared with the previous month: the figure came to 4,124,791,000 RUR in November 2008 but only to 3,099,915,000 RUR on January 1, 2009. These data are available from Bank24.ru’s official website featuring a report on the performance of Sverdlovsk Region’s banks on January 1, 2009.

Last December, the money volume of loans offered by Bank24.ru to its customers dropped by 1,160,252,000 RUR compared with November 2008. The figure came to 3,205,298,000 RUR in December 2008 against 4,365,550,000 RUR in November 2008. These data are available from Bank24.ru’s official website featuring a report on the performance of Sverdlovsk Region’s banks on January 1, 2009.

‘Koltsovo Airport of Yekaterinburg serviced 2,529,395 passengers last year, with the annual net profit preliminarily estimated at 587million RUR (compared with 747 million RUR in 2007). The revenues are expected to reach 6.5 billion RUR (in comparison with 5.3 billion RUR in 2007). This increase in revenues can be explained by the greater jet fuel prices,’ Koltsovo Airport’s General Director Kirill Shubin announced in the course of a press conference in Yekaterinburg. ‘The amount of money airlines owe us nearly doubled over 2008; remarkably, the lion’s share of these debts was made before

Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) has recently re-launched its No.4 sintering plant. Prior to this re-launch, the plant had to be temporarily halted in November 2008 because of decreasing production output. According to the company’s PR Department, one of the plant’s key challenges lay in keeping as many of the sintering plant’s workers as possible busy and employed during the stoppage. To do this, the plant had to switch to a five-shift working mode, with a portion of workers transferred to No.2 and No.3 sintering plants, the sulfur unit, and the concentrate storage area. In the

Sverdlovsk Region’s division of Federal Antimonopoly Service is to consider the claim laid against MRSK Ural (the interregional network distribution company) on January 27, 2009. The company is suspected of violating Article 10 (part 1) of the Federal Bill 135 on Protection of Competition (as of July 26, 2006). The alleged violation consisted in making Uralelectromed reconcile with inconvenient terms of an agreement on technological connection (to be provided by MRSK Ural). Then, the defendant is suspected of inflicting upon Uralelectromed the similarly inconvenient terms of maintenance

The Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development recently launched a new, special deposit type known as Business Rhythm, the bank’s press officer reports. The beauty of the new deposit offer lies in the bank’s readiness to let the customer take the money back before the end of the deposit period; what is more, even if a customer wants to cash the deposit early, the interest rates will still look very appealing, which makes managing one’s finances more flexible and more profitable. The deposit period comes to anything between 100 and 367 days. In case a customer chooses to open a deposit for