Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) presented it Mill 5000 potential at The Urals’ Industry, the first industrial exhibition in Tyumen. This exhibition was part of the project on the industrial development of the Urals’ north (known as The Industrial Urals-The Polar Urals Corporation). Chelyabinsk Region (which owns a shareholding in the corporation) presented over fifteen regional enterprises at the exhibition, including MMK. MMK’s PR Department reports the company’s stand displayed the capabilities of their future hot-roll Mill 5000 meant for manufacturing plate iron, with width

‘UC RUSAL’s Bogoslovskiy smelter carried out a detailed investigation of why the River Turiya, Sverdlovsk Region, had turned red. It was detected that the area around the company’s slurry pipeline got contaminated because the pipeline had leaked. So some of the slurry was washed down into the river with melt-water, coloring it red,’ the smelter reports. This means UC RUSAL’s enterprise actually admitted that their equipment did have some faults and deficiencies, whereas they had claimed earlier that the company had nothing to do with the contamination of the river. The local public

Kommersant-Dengi has recently compiled a list of Russia’s thirty banks most affected by the crisis, with Probusinessbank declared one of the country’s most unprofitable banks. The bank in question (which actually undertook the financial recovery of Yekaterinburg-based and infamously unprofitable Bank24.ru last year) was given the 13th position in the rating. Probusinessbnak’s losses amounted to 310.272 million RUR, the magazine reports.

According to Kommersant-Dengi, Bank Severnaya Kazna and Bank24.ru were on the list of Russia’s thirty most unprofitable banks as of April 1, 2009. Bank Severnaya Kazna (the asset of Alfa-Bank) was given the third position in the rating, with losses coming to 2,813,969,000 RUR, while Bank 24.ru (owned by Life Group) was given the 14th position in the rating, with losses reaching 289.657 million RUR.

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court is to hold the preliminary hearing of the claim laid by Bank Severnaya Kazna against Mayak Corporation and Uralinvesttsentr on May 25, 2009. The plaintiff insists on the defendants paying the bank 183,048,144.65 RUR and on having their mortgaged property collected. President of Mayak Corporation Marina Konkova declared earlier that the company was trying to get their loan debts restructured by the bank. ‘It turned out very difficult to get our payments prolonged and refinanced for a longer period of time, despite our being the bank’s major customer and the

MRSK Urala decreased its electricity supply by 16.8% in the first quarter of 2009 compared with a year earlier, the company’s quarterly financial and performance report states. The useful electrical supply came to 17882.6 million kilowatt-hours, which falls short of the figures for a year earlier by 18.1%. At the same time, 2166.6 million kilowatt-hours worth of electricity was lost.