‘Following some negotiations, two dealing agreements have been signed with Avtosan and Okami,’ Ford Motor Company’s press officer Ekaterina Kulinenko informed UrBC reporters. Ford chose its new Yekaterinburg dealers as early as September 2009; prior to this, Avtoland Holding had been the car manufacturer’s only representative in the city. ‘Avtosan and Okami have been our official dealers since mid-October. We expect both car centers to start rendering their customers a full range of sales and after-sales services by the end of the year,’ Kulinenko noted.

‘I’m not sure the reopening of Palma-Tours’ office in Pushkin St can actually be taken seriously. I think I’ll wait till the unhappy customers have placed their complaints and then see what conclusions can be made,’ President of Sverdlovsk Region Information and Tourism Center Vadim Viner said to UrBC. The notorious tour operator that used to offer its services to dwellers of Sverdlovsk, Chelyabinsk, and Tyumen Regions and Knanty-Mansiyskiy Autonomous Region had earlier claimed to have gone out of business. The company’s offices closed down about a week ago. However, one of its

Alexander Misharin has by now been adjured and assumed the office of Governor of Sverdlovsk Region. The decision to make him Governor was taken during a joint meeting of the Legislative Assembly’s both chambers in Yekaterinburg on November 23, 2009. In fact, the initial decision to this extent was made during a joint meeting on November 17, 2009 when Misharin was presented to the deputies by Plenipotentiary Representative of Russian Federation President in Ural Federal District Nikolai Vinnichenko. The second meeting was attended by the Russian Federation Transport Minister Igor Levitin (who

The Federal Financial Market Service decided to annul the licenses allowing Pervouralsk-based Universal Commercial Bank to perform brokerage and dealing operations on the securities market. This decision was made after the bank’s banking operation license had been declared invalid by the Central Bank of the Russian Federation’s order OD-684 as of October 28, 2009.

‘The profit resulting from selling Sverdlovsk Region’s 185-million-ruble share in Europe Business Center is expected to make up the lion’s share of the total revenues (that is, 227 million RUR) that came from selling public property to private owners in 2009. I believe the current owner of the business center is the most likely customer for this share,’ says Sverdlovsk Region Public Property Management Minister Alexei Molotkov. ‘The same is true of Uspenskiy Mall. Some of its assets are managed by the regional unitary enterprise that has been allowed by the regional authorities to sell the

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court keeps looking into the claim laid by Koltsovo Airport of Yekaterinburg against VIM-AVIA Airline; the plaintiff wants to be paid 1.99 million RUR worth of debts and rent. In the course of the preliminary hearing, the court decided that the handling of the case should be postponed until the parties have tried to reach an out-of-court settlement. The court’s next hearing was scheduled for November 20, 2009.

The credit rating service called off Rusfinance Bank’s ratings upon the bank’s own request. Rusfinance Bank’s long- and short-term contractor’s ratings were preliminarily affirmed at BB+ and B, respectively, with Negative Rating Outlook. Also, the bank’s national scale rating was preliminarily affirmed at ruAA+, with Negative Rating Outlook.

Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) closed up the tender aimed at determining the coupon interest rate for its 5bn-ruble BO-01 bond issue valid for 1,092 days (3 year). The issue provides for an annual offer and the coupon period comes to 182 days. The investors placed 255 applications for the tender worth 19.9 billion RUR altogether, so the issue was actually oversubscribed by nearly 300%. According to the results of the tender, the annual interest rate for the first and the second coupons of MMK’s bond issue was set at 9.45%. The coupon yield during the first year of circulation will

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court is to look into two claims laid by local banks against Pnevmostroymashina and PSM-Gidravlika on November 19, 2009. Sberbank of Russia’s Oktyabrskoye division 1794 wants to be paid 179.66 million RUR worth of debt and to have the defendants’ real estate assets (some buildings and land allotments) arrested. TransCreditBank demands that the defendants pay it 104.26 million RUR; the bank also asked for the seizure of their buildings and land allotments, but this application was turned down by the court. In the meantime, Pnevmostroymashina is already undergoing

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court has recently started to process the claim laid by Mikhail Maksimov against Leonid Itskov and Uralincombank Ural Innovational Commercial Bank (UIC-Bank) regarding the plaintiff’s right to a shareholding in the bank’s authorized capital. The preliminary court hearing needed to understand all the circumstances essential to handling the claim and getting evidence and proof is to take place on Thursday. The whole thing began in July 2009 when the bank got many new owners. According to the company’s official website July listings, Leonid Itskov owned 7.52% of

Head of Russian Pension Fund’s Sverdlovsk Region division Sergey Dubinkin was detained on his way to Koltsovo Airport of Yekaterinburg on November 19, 2009. The operation was carried out by the officers of Ural Federal District’s division of the Ministry of Internal Affairs; this was done within the framework of the criminal lawsuit regarding the embezzlement of 955 million RUR belonging to the Pensions Fund from the accounts of Bank VEFK-Ural. The spokesperson for the law-enforcement agency reports Dubinkin was supposedly going to flee to Moscow. He is now kept in a detention ward. This head

Russkiy Narodniy Bank intends to make Uralvagonzavod Scientific and Production Corporation pay it over 10 million RUR. The bank placed a claim against Uralvagonzavod and Uralvagonagro with Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court and now insists on being paid 10,000,000 RUR worth of the promissory note debt, 106,944 RUR worth of interest, and 106,944 RUR worth of fines (as stated in Paragraph 48 on the Provision on Bills of Exchange and Promissory Notes. The defendant refused to agree with the claims since on the date the disputed promissory note was signed the company’s General Director Nikolai

Yekaterinburg-based Koltsovo Airport is going to raise its jet fuel prices by 3.3% on November 23, 2009. ‘The increase in our retail price is a follow-up on the rising supplier’s prices. All Russian airports have had to raise their prices recently, and ours is actually the same as the market’s average one,’ the airport’s press officer reports. The airport last changed fuel prices on September 18, 2009 when the price rose by 6.7%.

‘Foreign banks and crediting agencies are willing to cooperate with the Russian companies and are very positive about Russia’s future economic development,’ Landesbank Berlin AG Export Financing Director Bernd Schmidt announced at an Interfax press conference. ‘Sometimes direct interaction is possible, including cases when a bank and agency finance some long-term projects. In most cases, however, a customer needs some Russian bank as an intermediary. Actually, we choose our Russian partners very carefully and work only with the most reliable banks,’ he added.

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court resolved case А60-45339/2009-С11 as of November 2, 2009 by declaring DEKRA PLUS insolvent. The company will now have to undergo six-month bankruptcy proceedings. Vladimir Rozhdestvenskiy of Delo Self-Regulatory Organization of Trustees in Bankruptcy Noncommercial Partnership has been appointed the company’s trustee in bankruptcy.

The sales revenues of Sverdlovsk Region-based VSMPO-Avisma went down by 3.6 billion RUR, or 16% in January-September 2009. The revenue figure thus only came to 19.2 billion RUR. The company says the revenues dropped because of reduced sales output. However, the drop in sales revenues was partially made up for by 18% decrease in the prime cost of the company’s produce, VSMPO-Avisma Corporation says. The corporation’s gross profit declined by 7.5 billion RUR, or 12.6% in the third quarter of 2009. Its net profit plunged by 33.4% and amounted to 977.171 million RUR, whereas the return on assets

The internal rules and policy of Bank VTB Severo-Zapad and Citibank Commercial Bank have not been approved of by the Federal Financial Market Service so as to prevent money laundering

‘Yekaterinburg’s automobile market has shrunk by 40% to 45% since the recession started. This is why we are going to have only one of the three initially planned show rooms commissioned this year. This will be our motor show in the city’s Zheleznodorozhniy district. All in all, five show rooms in Metallurgov St. have had to be frozen,’ Deputy Mayor of Yekaterinburg Viktor Konteev said at a press briefing in Yekaterinburg. The frozen show rooms belong to Volkswagen, Nissan, Mitsubishi, and UralFranceAvto. As for the BMW show room, it won’t be opened this year, but the construction process has

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin met his special representative in the town of Karabash Vyacheslav Yagodinets. According to the spokesperson for the Governor, Vyacheslav Yagodinets made a report on the results of his performance in the capacity of a special representative. He explained that he had been cooperating closely with the acting Mayor Tatiana Pankratova in such areas as getting ready for the winter, upgrading the public housing services sector, and supporting the social infrastructure. The official asked Petr Sumin to help introduce street lamps on the main streets and next

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin held a meeting with the General Director of Ural Mining & Metallurgical Company Andrei Kozitsin. According to the spokesperson for the Governor, Petr Sumin met the new head of Chelyabinsk Zinc Plant Andrei Panshin during this meeting. Also, Andrei Kozitsin informed the Governor of the preliminary results of the enterprise’s performance in 2009 and spoke of its plans for 2010. Kozitsin believes zinc will be sold for about $1,800 per ton in 2010, which will mean the plant will be able to break even or make a profit and thus pay more taxes to the