The Russian Federation Federal Financial Market Service refused to register the report on the issue of certified non-convertible interest-bearing owner bonds of E.S. Yalamov Ural Mechano-Optical Plant Federal State Unitary Enterprise (series 02). Since not a single bond of the issue (registration number 4-02-00002-T as of December 18, 2008) has been placed so far, the issue was declared invalid and the Federal Financial Market Service decided to annul the issue’s state registration.

Ural Federal District’s division of Rosprirodnadzor (the state environmental watchdog) carried out several inspections of Yekaterinburg-based Koltsovo Airport. Four violations of the existing laws have been detected in the course of these inspections, so the company was given orders to remove them and is going to face administrative liability, the spokesperson for Ural Federal District’s division of Rosprirodnadzor reports. The division also inspected ZAO Kamensk-Uralskiy Mine and revealed that the enterprise violated the water code, so the company received orders to deal with the problem and

Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Alexander Misharin announced to the local bankers that mortgages need to become more affordable. The executive said in the course of his visit to Kamensk-Uralskiy that he hoped to make the interest rate on mortgages drop to 11% a year. The Governor feels the region’s banks should also decrease the down payment to 10% of the total loan sum. In fact, Russian President Dmitriy Medvedev has already promised to make the interest rates go down. The president declared the rates should come to 6% to 8% a year. ‘We’ll keep on gradually reducing the interest rates on

A number of Alfa-Bank’s offices will be closed down in Yekaterinburg. For one, the bank’s Yekaterinburg-Kupecheskiy outlet (located in Greenwich shopping mall) will soon stop operating. The bank’s representatives say they need to cut down on the number of offices, even though Alfa-Bank enjoys popularity with the local dwellers. ‘The closing down of Yekaterinburg-Kupecheskiy is done within the framework of our front office-reduction program. This became necessary after Alfa-Bank acquired the former offices of Bank Severnaya Kazna,’ Alfa-Bank’s press service reports. A representative of

The international rating agency still keeps Evraz Group SA’s long-term Issuer Default Rating (B+) and priority non-secured rating (B+) on the Rating Watch list, with Negative Rating Outlook. The steel company’s short-term Issuer Default Rating has been affirmed at B, while the asset payback rating came to RR4. Fitch Ratings’ analysts explain the company keeps Negative outlook because it is still unclear whether Evraz will manage to get the funding needed to refinance its debts and pay them off in 2010 – 2011.

Starting February 26, 2010 Ural Airlines is to increase the number of its international flights operated from Samara and to introduce a new flight from Samara to Hudzhant, Tajikistan. The flight will be operated every Friday using an A320 airplane according to the following timetable: Samara-Hudzhant flight: departure time is 1:50 AM; arrival time is 6:00 AM; Hudzhant-Samara flight: departure time is 8:00 AM; arrival time is 10:00 AM;

A number of Russian banks fail to meet the Federal Financial Market Service’s requirements aimed at counteracting laundering proceeds from criminal activity as well as terrorist financing, Vedomosti reports. So the Service’s management intends to take strict measures against the non-compliers. ‘We often refuse to approve of banks’ internal rules and policies that do not meet the legal requirements. At the moment, we just ask the banks to adjust their rules, but if we still find problems, we’ll take action and might even cancel a bank’s license,’ Vedomosti quotes Head of the Federal Financial

Sverdlovsk Region’s division of the Federal Antimonopoly Service instituted legal proceedings against OOO Autoleader-Vostok, accusing the car dealer of violating advertising laws. The division received a complaint from a private individual who claimed that the company’s website used an advertisement which violated Article 5 (part 7) of the Advertising Act, namely, the ad failed to give some essential information about the product or the terms of purchase and usage; also, the information that was present in the ad was allegedly inaccurate, and the consumers appeared to be deluded. For one, the

Standard & Poor's repots that the merger of OAO AKB Rosbank with a few Russia-based daughter enterprises of Bank Société Générale is not going to affect Rosbank’s ratings immediately. Société Générale (SocGen; A+/Stable /A-1) and Interros’s Rosbank (BB+/Negative /B; national scale rating: ruAA+) announced the news on February 18, 2010. Rosbank and Bank Société Générale Vostok (a universal bank with no rating) will merge into a single structure but will both keep their independent brands, while OOO Rusfinans Bank (a bank dealing in consumer loans with no rating) and ZAO KB DeltaCredit

The situation around Lufthansa’s Yekaterinburg-Frankfurt flight that was to have been operated on February 25, 2010 still remains unclear. The airline’s pilots went on strike and so two flights from Yekaterinburg to Frankfurt scheduled for February 23 and 25, 2010 had to be canceled. The spokesperson for Koltsovo Airport of Yekaterinburg informed UralBusinessConsulting that the airport did not know whether the flight scheduled for February 25, 2010 would actually be operated, whereas the German carrier announced the strike would be postponed by two weeks. ‘We are not the ones to make the

An employee of Uralmashzavod is now on average forty-five years old, the enterprise’s HR Director Natalya Babilurova announced at Sverdlovsk Region Women’s Parliament Council meeting in Yekaterinburg. According to Ms Babilurova, only a thousand workers haven’t reached the age of thirty-five yet, all of which is explained by the workforce shortage. By 2012, the median age of Uralmashzavod’s employees is expected to go down to forty, the spokesperson for Sverdlovsk Region Legislative Assembly reports.

In 2010, Russian Railways is planning to implement its restructuring program and set up Russian Railways Holding, which means, among other things, that Sverdlovsk Region Railways (the company’s subsidiary) will no longer have some if its front offices; also, its non-core activity will now be outsourced, says Sverdlovsk Region Railways’ PR Department. Sverdlovsk Region Railways insists the reorganization will not result in large-scale layoffs. The company expects to outsource its motor vehicle facilities to OOO ResourceTrans this year. In addition, Russian Railways’ local customer service

Russia might only be able to launch 71 giga-watts worth of new electricity-generating facilities by 2020 instead of the proposed 72.5 giga-watts, RIA Novosti reports. ‘According to the findings of the Energy Ministry, forty-three power generating units out of 107 proposed new units are not being constructed at the moment. This comes to 9.82 giga-watts worth of power. Seventeen units are currently at the preparation work stage, building and assembly jobs are being done at thirty-eight units, and nine units have been launched this year,’ RIA Novosti states. The Energy Ministry says such

OOO Gazpromneftfinans sold a potion of OAO Gazpromneft-Ural’s shares and now only owns 33.73% of the latter’s stock. Gazpromneftfinans used to hold 43.6% of Gazpromneft-Ural’s shares. At the same time, OOO Ural-Viktan now owns 7.9421% of Gazpromneft-Ural’s shares.

The Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to the Russian Federation Anne Pringle and a delegation of officials from the UK Consulate General in Yekaterinburg visited OAO Uralelectromed (Ural Mining & Metallurgical Company’s asset) and met the company’s Director Vladimir Kolotushkin. This is the fifth time Anne Pringle has come to the Urals, but the Ambassador has never been to the premises of UMMC or Uralelectromed before. The British official looked at the chemical & metallurgical and the copper wire rod shops. ‘UMMC

Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Alexander Misharin met the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United Kingdom to the Russian Federation Anne Pringle, who arrived in Yekaterinburg to look at the region’s socioeconomic development and to learn about the approach taken by the local authorities to counteract the global economic recession. According to the spokesperson for the Governor, the UK has been one of Sverdlovsk Region’s top twenty foreign business partners over the last few years. In 2009, the two parties’ trade turnover totaled to $245.2m, which was the 13th largest figure

The e-customers of Bank24.ru have been once again faced with the bank’s poor online performance: they couldn’t perform a single transaction, as the service denied private individuals any access to the resource. The denial was explained by preventive maintenance operations, even though the bank never informed its customers about these operations beforehand. Some of the unhappy customers comment on this via E1 forum: ‘There is nothing about the preventive maintenance in the news, so this must be something done on a regular basis and under a schedule, then? I would like my bank to be

The internal rules and policy of Khanty-Mansiysk-based Khanty-Mansiyskiy Bank have not been approved of by the Federal Financial Market Service of the Russian Federation so as to counteract laundering proceeds from criminal activity and terrorist financing.

The Ural division of Rostechnadzor (the state environmental, technological, and nuclear safety watchdog) carried out an investigation and detected that the fatal accident at Kalyinskaya mine (SUBR-Stroy, Sverdlovsk Region) on January 15, 2010 had been caused by poor mine maintenance, badly organized working space, unsatisfactory arrangement of production processes, and lack of control over technological and production discipline, the spokesperson for the division reports. The fatal accident occurred at Kalyinskaya mine on January 15, 2010. The victim was a forty-five-year-old shaft man. A

Standard & Poor’s decreased Evraz Group’s rating from B+ down to B, with Stable Rating Outlook. ‘The decrease in ratings is a sign that the agency believes Evraz to be entering a period of operational weakness for the next couple of years due to the steel industry’s dramatic downfall,’ says the agency’s credit analyst Alex Herbert. S&P expects the company to remain heavily in debt (stemming from some earlier acquisitions) and to have limited cash generation. The agency feels Evraz Group’s profits and cash flow will gradually restore as the steel market slowly comes back to life.