‘Severouralsk Bauxite Mine (SUBR) is struggling with a lot of problems at the moment, the major ones being the wages and the labor safety. The thing is, the workers’ wages have gone down by about 20% compared with May 2009. As for labor safety, the violations of the existing rules have resulted in a recent fatal accident in one of the mines,’ Chairman of UC RUSAL SUBR independent trade union Valeriy Zolotarev said to UrBC. ‘We were visited by two UC RUSAL representatives today, one of them being the HR Director. We explained everything about the problems SUBR has been faced with. At the end

The Arbitration Court keeps looking into the insolvency application laid by Leader Holding Company. Since the debtor must provide additional evidence of the company’s state, the court has had to put off the hearing in accordance with Article 158 of the Russian Federation Arbitration Code of Practice and Article 32 of the Federal Insolvency Act. Leader Holding Company placed its case with the arbitration court, asking to be declared bankrupt. The company’s application states that their creditors’ claims amount to 3,800,758,516.74 RUR (including 1,786,421,132.78 RUR worth of overdue debts). The

‘By introducing the new terms of paying off debts, AKB Absolut Bank is probably trying to reduce the amount of bad debts on the given loans, since the bank’s borrowers can now make these payments voluntarily. As a matter of fact, the new terms can be seen as a sort of peace settlement that provides for the debtor paying off one-tenth of the debt in exchange for cancellation of fines and sanctions,’ Unicom Partner Investment and Finance Company’s Deputy GD Dmitriy Zemerov said to an UrBC reporter. AKB Absolut Bank has recently announced that those of their customers who have delayed their loan

Standard & Poor's, the international rating agency, put Alfa-Bank’s ratings on CreditWatch list with Negative Rating Outlook, claiming this has to do with their general downgrading of the Russian banks’ asset quality estimates. According to the agency’s research findings, the great loan losses might make the Russian banks undergo re-capitalization. Standard & Poor's analysts believe that over the next three years, the total volume of these banks’ toxic assets (including restructured loans) might reach 38% of the overall total volume recorded at the end of 2008.

Uralvagonzavod Scientific and Production Association was given a four-billion-ruble state loan, Plenipotentiary Representative of Russian Federation President in Ural Federal District Nikolai Vinnichenko announced on June 18, 2009. This means that the enterprise’s total debt volume now comes to about 43 billion RUR. Meanwhile, Uralvagonzavod’s General Director Oleg Sienko said in his interview to RBC daily that the plant’s top executives were considering the idea of launching an additional four-billion-ruble share issue, with shares to be sold to the state.