Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin intends to personally investigate the situation with the profit taxes paid earlier by the local enterprises that are to be paid back to them, he announced at an administrative meeting on May 25, 2009. According to the spokesperson for the Governor, the sum due to be paid back to businesses comes to more than eight billion rubles at the moment, including 1.07 billion RUR paid back in December 2008 and over 4 billion RUR paid back since the beginning of the year. At the same time, the regional budget’s profits dropped by 45% in the first quarter of 2009

‘The only reason we gave up on the idea of buying Bank Severnaya Kazna was that we had a certain upper price limit that we couldn’t afford to break during the negotiations. In fact, we did state this exact reason to the bank’s stockholders as soon as the talks were over,’ the spokesperson for AFK Sistema Yulia Belous said to an UrBC reporter. As it happens, the acquisition of Bank Severnaya Kazna by AFK Sistema (which was willing to handle the bank’s financial recovery) was cancelled at the last minute. The bank’s former BOD Chairman Vladimir Frolov later hinted at Sistema’s dubious paying

‘The economic crisis has made Auchan reconsider its plans to put up a number of new hypermarkets. They were going to build one in each of Yekaterinburg’s districts at first, but now they will only be able to set up two hypermarkets within a course of two to three years,’ says Deputy Mayor of Yekaterinburg Viktor Konteev’s press secretary Ilona Starodubtseva. ‘They are currently finalizing the details of the land allotment purchases. The new stores are to be located on the way out of town and will operate in much the same format as the existing ones,’ she explained.

Concern Kalina’s net profit (calculated in accordance with the International Accounting Standards) went down by 34.3% in the first quarter of 2009 compared with a year earlier and reached 139.4 million RUR, the spokesperson for the company reports. The cosmetics manufacturer’s revenues amounted to 3.6 billion RUR and its gross profit to 1.91 billion RUR over the same period of time. EBITDA rose by 17.3% and came to 471.88 million RUR. Besides, the changing lending practices and the devaluation of the ruble against the U.S. dollar and the Euro in the second half of 2008 and the early months of

URSA Bank made ?14m worth of coupon payments on its LPN bonds coupons. The coupon yield was determined at 7% a year, the bank’s press officer reports. Ireland-based URSA Finance Plc went through with its ?400m Eurobonds issue on May 21, 2007. The issue was also coordinated by ABN Amro and Deutsche Bank. The bonds are to be in circulation for three years. According to URSA Bank, there are currently ?202.17m worth of this issue’s bonds on the market.

Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) developed its environmental program for 2009. MMK comes up with such a program on a yearly basis in order to decrease its negative impact on the environment and to make sure they keep to the norms of air and water emissions and industrial waste limits. ‘Some of our most important tasks include putting up a dust exhausting unit for our Mill 5000 that will trap at least 900 tons of dust a year. In addition, some gas-purification units will be installed at our CC machine department. All in all, we plan to spend 300 million RUR on air-friendly innovations