MRSK Urala Board of Directors resolved to increase the number of the Supervisory Board members from six to ten people. The Board will now comprise Deputy General Director for Corporate Management Evgeniy Popov, Deputy GD and Director of Permenergo (MRSK Urala’s subsidiary) Oleg Zhdanov, Deputy GD and Director of Chelyabenergo (MRSK Urala’s subsidiary) Igor Butakov, and Deputy GD and Director of Sverdlovenergo (MRSK Urala’s subsidiary) Oleg Moshinskiy. The electricity supplier reports the decision was taken due to the executives’ wish to consider the subsidiary directors’ opinion on the issues

The internal rules and policy of Uniastrum Bank Commercial Bank have not been approved of by the Federal Financial Market Service so as to prevent money laundering and financial support of terrorist activity.

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court keeps processing Uralstroyproekt Construction Company’s bankruptcy application. In March 2006, the company was placed on the list of dishonest developers that had been compiled by the City of Yekaterinburg. The reason for this blacklisting was the fact that the developer failed to put up its buildings within deadlines. However, the company was taken off this list in August 2007. Uralstroyproekt applied for bankruptcy because its wage arrears, debts, and other obligatory payments had amounted to 111.8 million RUR and it had had no permanent assets except for

Russian President Dmitriy Medvedev signed a decree that will provide for the introduction of a number of federal-status universities in Russia. So the Russian Federation Government now has three months to set up Ural Federal University in Ural Federal District. This higher educational establishment will be founded on the basis of Boris N. Yeltsin Ural State Technical University.

The management of Pokrovskiy Passage Shopping Center can’t compensate the dwellers of an apartment building that was illegally knocked down in the center of Yekaterinburg. What actually happened was that about 50% of a two-storey building at 8/10 Rosa Luxemburg St. collapsed and slid right into the foundation pit dug up for an extension to Pokrovskiy Passage on August 6, 2009. The State Construction Surveillance Administration declared this had been due to lack of proper control on the part of the developer and violation of night-time construction regulations. The shopping center

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court decided to consider the validity of Uralskiy Val’s bankruptcy application in December 2009, the spokesperson for the court informed the UrBC reporter. The consumer electronics and white goods chain store applied for bankruptcy on September 28, 2009, declaring it was unable to pay its creditors in full since its liabilities exceeded the worth of its assets. As for the company’s trustee in bankruptcy, Elena Klochko of Ural Region Self-Regulatory Organization of Trustees in Bankruptcy Noncommercial Partnership is one of the possible candidates. In fact,

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin decided to allocate 100 million RUR to Chelyabgortrans so that the municipal public transport organization could pay off its debts to electricity and heating suppliers, the spokesperson for the Governor reports. ‘We can’t let Chelyabinsk dwellers freeze themselves to death while waiting for buses and trams that won’t come on time. The city’s public transport system must be failure-proof,’ Sumin said. According to the regional minister for construction, roads, and infrastructure Viktor Tupikin, the money allocated from the region’s budget will allow

‘Our luxury phones sales have dropped by 4% since the recession began,’ Evroset’s General Director Alexander Malis announced at a press conference in Yekaterinburg. ‘In fact, we had to close down our Evroset-Luxe store in Yekaterinburg because our landlord refused to reduce the rent. However, we’ll probably open another one in a different location,’ Malis added. Incidentally, the company had announced earlier that their Evroset-Boutique would resume operating in May or June 2009.

Uralvestkom (SkyLink-Yekaterinburg) announced it would no longer offer its customers subscription to Regional scheme starting November 1, 2009. What is more, the company won’t be offering some of the options previously available through Turbo scheme; then, its Business scheme will undergo some changes. On December 1, 2009, the mobile operator will stop servicing the following subscription schemes: Unlimited SOMA, Super Blitz, Alternative, Profi SkyLink, Vestkom-Sprint SL, FreeFly, Tandem, Tandem ½, Major League (Individual), Major League (Group), SkyLight, SkyEconomy, SkyComfort, SkyProfi,

The 17th Arbitration/Appeals Court ruled in favor of the Federal Antimonopoly Service’s Sverdlovsk Region division’s verdict on October 21, 2009. The FAS division had demanded that MRSK Urala stop making Uralelectromed buy their services. The FAS declared on March 26, 2009 that MRSK Urala violated Article 10 (part 1, paragraph 3) of the Federal Competition Protection Act 135-FZ as of July 26, 2006. The violation allegedly consisted in the company forcing their customer Uralelectromed to agree to the electricity supply terms that were not really suitable for the latter. Namely, the company

MDM Bank’s subsidiaries based in Ural and Siberian Federal Districts have recently started refinancing consumer loans issued by other banks. Borrowers with no overdue loan payments can be given a loan of up to 100,000 RUR for a period of one to seven years. ‘MDM Bank is now ready to help responsible loan recipients (and customers of other banks) decrease their monthly loan payments. This means we are willing to offer them loans that they can use to pay off their debt in the other bank. Depending on the loan payment period, our customers can reduce their monthly fee considerably,’ says MDM

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin allocated 156 million RUR from the region’s budget, to be invested in Chelyabinsk’s education system. According to the spokesperson for the Governor, the money is one of the many portions provided by the budget for local education programs this year. All in all, the city will be given 2.225 million RUR in 2009, of which 1.6 million will be spent on teachers’ salaries. Chelyabinsk’s 145 schools employ about 5,500 teachers, while the entire region’s 938 schools employ over 27,500 teachers. All these people’s salaries are fully and timely covered by the

Chairman of the Russian Federation State Duma and Head of United Russia’s Supreme Council Boris Gryzlov feels the government should support The Industrial Urals – The Polar Urals (an ambitious large-scale project on the industrial development of the Urals’ north) by providing some subsidies from the Investment Fund, Prime TASS reports. ‘United Russia has been involved in this project for two years now. I believe the documentation will have been fully confirmed by the end of the year; however, the state budget does not cover the financing for the project in 2010-2012,’ Gryzlov said to Head of

The region’s Deputy Prosecutor wants the court to cancel the agreement regarding the rent of land allotment (cadastral No. 66:41:07 02 064:0078) with the area of 2,800 sq m located in Sovetskaya St. in Yekaterinburg. According to the land use map, the allotment is actually situated in the middle of Zheleznodorozhnikov St.-Pionerov St.-Uralskaya St. - Sovetskaya St. quarter. The plaintiff requires that this land allotment be yielded back to Yekaterinburg municipal council.

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court will resume hearing of the claim laid by Bank VTB against Pnevmostroymashina on October 20, 2009. The plaintiff wants to be paid 51.88 million RUR and to have the defendant’s mortgaged property arrested. The sum of the claim is made up of 50 million RUR worth of debt proper (resulting from the loan agreement signed on December 24, 2007), a certain amount of loan interest, and the commission charged for cash transactions. As for the mortgaged property in question, these are the assets of PSM-Gidravlika used as collateral for the loan agreement. The bank has

Sverdlovsk Region environmental prosecution authorities detected numerous violations of the existing laws at Uralkhimmash, their spokesperson reports. For one, the enterprise whose production process involves sixty-one different kinds of by-products and waste has no certificates listing the hazard class of these wastes and carries no passports or documentation for sixteen kinds of hazardous pollutants. What is more, the workers handling this hazardous waste have not received any professional, documented training. Then, Uralkhimmash is supposed to maintain a 100-meter protective zone in

SKB-Bank came up with a performance report for January-September 2009; most of the company’s development indicators showed some positive dynamics. For one, the bank’s asset volume increased by over 2.8 billion RUR in September 2009 and thus exceeded 46.8 billion RUR. Then, SKB-Bank attracted 2.5 billion RUR worth of various investments, mostly in the form of private individuals’ deposits; the total volume of attracted investment thus reached 39.8 billion RUR. Finally, the bank’s own funds came to more than 8.232 billion RUR on October 1, 2009, a figure which allows SKB-Bank to remain

The Central Bank of Russia reports the volume of private for-profit organizations’ deposits (those valid for 31 to 90 days) at KAB Bank Société Générale Vostok went down by 11.09% in August 2009, that is, from 14,138,288,000 RUR to 12,569,836,000 RUR.

‘It would actually be a good idea to put up a similar depot in the north of Sverdlovsk Region (say, in Verkhoturye), since traffic will start moving in from Khanty-Mansiyskiy Autonomous Region as soon as this winter,’ Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Eduard Rossel said at the opening ceremony of LUKOIL’s new bulk plant in Yekaterinburg. ‘Then, the filling station at Koltsovo Airport of Yekaterinburg needs to be fully upgraded, especially as the airport is trying to develop despite the current economic hardships,’ the Governor added. The Governor first spoke about his plan to solve the problem of

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court is going to look into the claim laid by Rosoboronexport Federal State Unitary Enterprise against Ural Civil Aviation Plant on October 19, 2009. The plaintiff insists on being paid 2.28 million RUR. According to the case files, Rosoboronexport wants to get 1,398,881 RUR in terms of the debt itself and 881,291 RUR in terms of interest charged in accordance with Article 395 of the Russian Federation Civil Code. The claim thus totals to 2,280,172 RUR. The plaintiff maintains Ural Civil Aviation Plant failed to pay them the obligatory five-percent commission on