The Deputy Head of Rostechnadzor’s Ural Federal District division Alexander Kravchenko made a report on the all-round inspections of the local mining enterprises. This came to forty-two checks throughout 2008 altogether. All in all, the most noticeable trend was that the mining equipment tended to wear out faster than the companies were able to have it replaced or upgraded. Then, a lot of accidents and emergencies appeared to be caused by the workers’ lack of qualification and discipline. ‘Unfortunately, the economic crisis that broke out in October and November has led to a production

The Central Bank of Russia reports the volume of loans given by Uralfinprombank to non-state for-profit organizations for up to 30 days had dropped by 46.67% (from 111.581 million RUR to 59.5 million RUR) by February 1, 2009.

‘The economic crisis has left VIZ-Stal (as well as most metallurgical enterprises) with the plummeting demand for its produce. The drop was particularly felt in the first quarter of the year,’ says the company’s Deputy GD Sergey Makurov. ‘Our action plan provides for decreasing all the non-manufacturing costs and making our production process more efficient. Then, we are still trying to reach the optimal staff balance (as we have been doing since 2007, in fact). This actually means 2,271 to 2,200 people will probably have been made redundant by July 1, 2009. No more workers will be fired

The total volume of bank cards issued by URSA Bank in 2008 rose by 76% in comparison with a year earlier and amounted to over 1.9 million items. These figures include 695,263 international Visa and MasterCard ones (whose total amount thus comes to 1,110,734 cards); in fact, URSA Bank’s acquiring turnover reached $1.9bn last year. In addition to this, the bank issued 134,528 Zolotaya Korona cards in 2008, so the total amount of these now comes to 809,218 units. The acquiring turnover involving this type of cards reached $837m. Apart from ongoing cards launch, URSA Bank kept improving on the

Boris Dyakonov is no longer going to serve as Bank24.ru’s Chairman; he is to be succeeded by Yaroslav Alexeev of Life Group. The news has been disseminated via the bank’s official website. Still, Boris Dyakonov is going to remain the BOD member, even though he is now not on the bank’s Supervisory Board.