Last December, SKB-Bank’s official website conducted a survey on people’s forecasts as to the U.S. dollar exchange rate on January 1, 2009. 790 respondents took part in the survey in six days, with the dollar rate coming to 27.8 RUR on the first day of the survey (December 13, 200) and fluctuating within .2 to .3 RUR range during the other five days. The Bank of Russia’s official dollar exchange rate was determined at 29.39 RUR on the first day of the year, while the number of those surveyed by SKB-Bank who managed to get the figure close enough was only 5%. The majority of respondents

‘Our customers started converting their ruble deposits into foreign currency ones (which led to a drop in the former and an increase in the latter) due to the growing dollar and euro exchange rates. One could suppose this trend is to continue this year until the main cause of the rate fluctuations is present – that is, the weakening of the ruble against the dollar and the euro,’ Rus-Bank-Ural’s Market Analysis Director Konstantin Yushkov said to an UrBC reporter. In the meantime, the ruble rate keeps going down against the U.S. dollar, which has been causing a decrease in the volume of ruble

Rus-Rating confirmed VUZ-Bank’s rating at BB-, with Indefinite Rating Outlook. The agency’s chief analyst Victoria Belozerova believes the bank’s current status’s strengths are the obvious support from Life Group’s key Probusinessbank (which has enough potential to aid VUZ-Bank financially even under current trying circumstances), the bank’s rather impressive share of the regional market, and lack of resource and liquidity dependence on the country’s interbank loan market. ‘At the same time, VUZ-Bank’s stability might be shattered because of possible greater resource dependence in terms of

The Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development-finance (the Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s 100% daughter enterprise) paid 25,243,245.72 RUR on its second issue’s bond’s 10th coupon on January 11, 2009. 31.16 RUR was paid per each 1,000 RUR bond (at 12.5% annual interest rate). It was determined by the issuer that the coupon yield for 9th to 12th coupons would come to 12.5% a year, or 31.16 RUR per each 1,000 RUR bond. The coupon payments on the 11th coupon are to be made on April 2, 2009; those for the 12th coupon are to be made on July 2, 2009, alongside with the retirement

Russian Trading System’s securities trading volume totaled to $13.7bn (385.7 billion RUR) in December 2008, including all kinds of transactions, even off-exchange ones. Gazprom’s (GAZP) common stock topped the stock market’s turnover rating with its $46.7m worth of transactions, followed by Sberbank of Russia’s (SBER) $46.6m worth of common stock deals, and the common stock of LUKOIL (LKOH) with its $22.2m worth of transactions in December 2008. These companies’ market shares thus came to 22.99%, 22.97%, and 10.92%, respectively. URALSIB’s (USBN) common stock soared by 100% (up to $.006) and