URSA Bank announced the launch of its new offer for business customers, who can now get the bank’s three-month business package free of charge if they deposit at least 500,000 RUR with the bank. ‘By opening a bank deposit, our customers get a chance to subscribe to the Acquaintance package and use all the necessary banking services free of charge for three entire months. This includes the opening and administration of a settlement account, subscribing the customer to our e-banking domain (Internet Bank, Client Bank, Telephone Bank), processing any amount of electronic payment documents,

The Bank of Russia’s PR Department reports they sent their plenipotentiary representatives to forty-seven financial institutions, seventeen of which are Moscow-based. This has been done in accordance with Article 76 of the federal bill on the Central Bank of the Russian Federation (the Bank of Russia). Among others, the representatives have been sent to Bank24.ru, Bank Yekaterinburg, and Bank Severnaya Kazna.

Koltsovo Airport of Yekaterinburg’s annual general meeting scheduled for June 26, 2009 has been declared invalid. The company reports the meeting failed due to lack of quorum. The airport’s PR Director Yulia Fedotova explained to an UrBC reporter that more preparation is needed to carry out an efficient meeting. The date for a new meeting is to be set by the company’s Board of Directors.

UralBusinessConsulting Agency of Information and Analytics has found out that thirty-six out Uralmashzavod’s forty-one departments are about to go on strike. According to the information available, the reason behind the upcoming strike is the arrears of wages: the workers haven’t been paid since April 2009. However, once the employees threatened the management with a stoppage, the executives did manage to find the money. The agency detected that paying the wages to these particular workers is likely to result in arrears in other shops and departments, including, in particular, the design and

Ural Turbine Plant has been placed on the list of companies owing considerable sums to the Russian Federation budget. According to Sverdlovsk Region’s division of the Russian Federation Federal Tax Service, the list comprises three hundred enterprises with debts amounting to more than 1 million RUR.

Nine out of MRSK Urala’s eleven former BOD members haven’t got elected to the new Board of Directors at this year’s annual general meeting in Yekaterinburg. The only people that did get elected were the Director of the company’s Moscow branch EDM Electricity Distribution Management (Cyprus) Limited Konstantin Shevchenko and Member of SO EES Supervisory Board and General Director of ODU Urala (SO EES’s subsidiary) Petr Yerokhin. Among the former BOD members who were not elected were BOD Chairman Alexander Chistyakov and former GD Alexei Bobrov. One newly elected member was the current GD

‘The budget of Nizhniy Tagil is currently the smallest among Russia’s industrial cities with lots of metallurgical and machine-building enterprises. The figures come to 4.8 billion RUR, whereas the budget of Magnitogorsk, for example, is 8.5 billion RUR,’ says Mayor of Nizhniy Tagil Valentina Isayeva. ‘The city gets so little money because its largest enterprises do not get enough orders. Naturally, one does not expect to get any during a crisis. This is why the budget has had to be reduced, for one, all the construction projects have been halted. As a result, we now have a deficit-free

Sberbank of Russsia’s Yekaterinburg-based offices keep offering special bonuses to people buying American Express travelers’ checks. Any customer who buys at least $2,000 or ?2,000 worth of these is offered a corporate style MP3 player, the bank’s press officer reports. According to the bank’s data, over $500,000 worth of American Express travelers’ checks were sold in Yekaterinburg offices within one month of the special offer, with over 50 players presented to customers.

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court is now hearing the claims laid by a number of Uralvagonzavod Scientific and Production Association’s creditors against the debtor. Two of these claims are to be considered on June 25, 2009. Intra Tool Ltd placed its claim with the regional court, insisting that the defendant should pay them 2,739,700.32 RUR Terra Trans Ltd took the case to Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court, demanding that Uralvagonzavod should pay them 25,697,434.15 RUR as the interest for using borrowed money; the interest was charged in accordance with Article 395 of the Russian

‘The situation is still difficult, but we are gradually recovering after the hard times we had at the end of last year. In February 2009, for instance, Sverdlovsk Region’s industrial output only came to 69% of last February’s figures, but the figure reached 80% in March and 84% in April 2009. Some growth was also observed in May and June 2009, which means that the local enterprises kept building up on their production volumes after the initial shock,’ Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Eduard Rossel announced while presenting the budget message at the Regional Duma and the Legislative Assembly’s

The Russian Federation Federal Antimonopoly Service imposed over 19 million RUR worth of fines on Koltsovo Airport of Yekaterinburg for the airport’s abuse of dominant market position (the charge is based on Article 14.31 of the Administrative Offense Code). The Service actually declared on September 19, 2009 that the airport had violated Article 10 (part 1) of the federal bill on the protection of competition (which prohibits profiteering from one’s dominant market position) by refusing to sign a certain agreement. Since Koltsovo Airport eliminated the problem voluntarily, no sanctions were

The officers of Nizhniy Tagil customs and the local law-enforcement officers detected that a Nizhniy Tagil-based sole trader had been selling fake Adidas sportswear – the goods had not been registered with the famous trademark, nor was there any permission to use it. What is more, any documents that could prove the legitimacy of using the trademark were actually missing. Some clothes samples were placed with the board of experts, who declared the goods were pirated copies. 160 items were confiscated, with the trademark owner’s damage estimated at over 260,000 RUR.

According to the data available from the country’s ferrous metallurgical enterprises, the ferrous metal-based rolled stock output decreased by 43.2%, 30%, 21.3%, and 18.5% at Severstal (Cherepovets Iron & Steel Works), Nizhniy Tagil Iron & Steel Works, Novolipetsk Iron & Steel Works, and Mechel (Chelyabinsk Iron & Steel Works), respectively, in January-May 2009 compared with January-May 2008. This has been reported by Sverdlovsk Region Ministry for Industry and Trade. At the same time, Russia’s steel pipe production output amounted to 2,368,000 tons, with all of the country’s

Uralvagonzavod Scientific and Production Enterprise keeps cutting back on civilian goods production: in January-May 2009, the output figures only amounted to 58% of the output reached a year earlier. Within these months, the enterprise manufactured 1,070 cisterns and had to stop producing any carriages in May 2009. This information is available from the report on the state of Russian industry and retail trade in January-May 2009 that has been drawn up by the Russian Federation Ministry for Industry and Trade.

The Russian Federation Ministry for Industry and Trade reports the country’s virgin aluminum production output keeps going down due to decreased demand and falling prices on both the home and foreign markets. The production outputs dropped the lowest at enterprises located in the Urals and the European part of Russia. According to the data available, UC RUSAL Bogoslovskiy smelter’s output dropped by 35.7% in January-May 2009 compared with January-May 2008; the output figures also decreased by 28.8%, 26.5%, 15%, 5.1%, and 17.3% at Nadvoitskiy smelter, Kandalakshskiy smelter, Volgograd smelter,

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin visited Chelyabinsk Tube Rolling Plant (ChTPZ) to look at the new LDP mill. The Governor was accompanied by the Soviet of the Federation member Andrei Komarov, Deputy Governor Yuri Klepov, head of the regional employment center Leonid Shusharin, and Mayor of Chelyabinsk Mikhail Yurevitch. First, Sumin checked out an electric welding department that has received over $150m worth of investments over the last few years. For one, two anti-corrosion coating production lines have been launched there. The workers presented one of these lines to the Governor,

‘The outcomes of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Yekaterinburg look rather dubious, to say the least. On the one hand, all the planned events did take place smoothly. On the other hand, knowing that the state and the local businesses have spent a total of about 60 billion RUR in preparation, one cannot help feeling that this is too much. Then, the summit was actually targeted at attracting investors but resulted in just one agreement: the China State Bank is going to offer us $1bn loan (instead of the earlier declared ?1bn, which would mean 33% more money). The loan is to be

‘Seventy rooms have already got commissioned at Ramada Ekaterinburg Hotel by now, with thirty more to get commissioned next week. There are 156 rooms in the hotel altogether,’ Director of Ramada Ekaterinburg Hotel Xavier Khlopovsky said at a meeting with the other local hoteliers. The hotel, formerly known as The Ukraine, is located next to Yekaterinburg-Koltsovo highway. It is now being renovated by Uralzarubezhservis and Mayak Corporation. The hotel had been expected to host a delegation of Chinese officials during the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Yekaterinburg on June 15-16,

‘We were trying to get to the federal highway, but we were prevented from doing so by two hundred special police force officers, who blocked all the way to the road. We’ve only got four hours to make the authorities resume the natural gas supply to the plant. The thing is, our furnaces will cool down without the continuous supply of gas, and it will be impossible to get them going again once they’ve grown cold. We mean to make more attempts as to blocking the federal highway,’ Bogdanovitch china plant’s Production Director Nadezhda Ulyanova said to UrBC. The plant was faced with the

MICEX index dropped by 7.8% at the close of business on June 22, 2009 and therefore amounted to 937.98 points at 7:29 PM (Moscow time). This level is actually comparable with that of the end of April. The stock exchange reports the shares of Uralsvyazinform dropped the lowest, with the share price going down by 13% at the close of business. Meanwhile, RTS index decreased by 5% by the end of the day as well and came to 961.04 points. Analysts believe the market has already shrunk by 20% since early June (when the year’s maximum figures were reached). They feel the decrease has to do with the