Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) drew up a plan for scientific and technical information promotion in 2008. The enterprise’s PR Department reports this is expected to help the company seek, investigate, and launch the newest technologies and devices more effectively. A new STI board was also elected, chaired by MMK’s chief engineer Sergey Ushakov. Then, executives responsible for information research and special reviewers were appointed in every production department. In addition, the board thought through their basic agenda, covering top-priority issues and this year’s business

Bank Vyatich’s net profit went down by 4.023 million RUR, or 80% in the last quarter of 2008. The bank’s net profit only reached 1.029 million RUR in October-December 2008 compared with 5.052 million RUR in July-September 2008. The bank reports the drop in their net profits was brought about by the increased expenses related to purchase and sale of foreign currency as well as greater investment in possible loss reserves. These reserves, in their turn, had to be built up upon because of the bank’s growing lending portfolio and advance payments on profits tax.

Fitch Ratings has recently demoted the Russian LSR Group’s Issuer Default Rating in foreign currency as well as its priority rating from B+ to B. Then, both of these ratings are now on the Rating Watch and marked as Negative. The Group’s rating indicating the possible asset recovery on the company’s priority debt was affirmed at RR4. LSR Ural Management Company comprises SMU Nova-Stroy, Betfor (the concrete goods manufacturer), Nova-Stroy, PKU Nova-StroyProekt, and Uralscheben. ‘The rating decrease shows that we expect LSR Group’s financial development indicators to be badly affected by the

Sverdlovsk Region’s division of Federal Antimonopoly Service keeps looking into the case involving Koltsovo Airport of Yekaterinburg, TNK BP Holding, and UNK. The claim against the companies was laid in October 2008 and involved alleged jet fuel price collusion. The last court hearing resulted in the decision to postpone the processing of the case because of the need to get some data from Ural Federal District’s division of Rostechnadzor (the state environmental, technological, and nuclear safety watchdog). What the court needed to know was whether it was possible to mix up several kinds of

Bank Severnaya Kazna’s net loss (now the asset of Alfa-Bank) was officially reported to have exceeded 1.52 billion RUR in the fourth quarter of 2008. A quarter earlier, the loss figure came to 60.507 million RUR. This means the net loss increase amounted to 1,464,444,000 RUR, or 2,240.29%. The bank claims the reason for net loss growth is their selling their securities portfolio and creating debt reserves.

According to RBC.Rating, Bank Monetniy Dom (formerly known as Mechel-Bank) was one of Russia’s Top 500 largest banks on October 1, 2008. The bank scored the 199th position in the rating, the agency reports. RBC.Rating says Bank Monetniy Dom’s net asset volume came to 7.839 billion RUR in January-September 2008, which was 53.07% better than a year earlier and therefore secured the bank an impressive promotion in the rating by as many as thirty-two positions up.