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.