Former director of Ferromin Ltd’s trade representation in Moscow Sergey Bubnov was appointed President of RUSAL America and will now report to RUSAL America’s Board of Directors. Richard Kellner was appointed the company’s CEO and is now in charge of financial accounting and internal control. Mark Bodner was appointed Sales Director and will now handle sales, marketing strategies, and customer service. Both Mr. Kellner and Mr. Bodner are to report to Mr. Bubnov. In the meantime, former President of RUSAL America Bruce Markowitz is leaving office. ‘North America is a very important region for

Russian Standard Bank is not going to offer its individual customers any cash loans or mortgages until after October 1, 2007. ‘This can definitely only be seen as a bad thing: first, a bank just doesn’t have any cash to give loans, and then, before you know it, it lacks money to return deposits. What matters most in this particular case is making sure things never arrive at the second scenario,’ Vsevolod Chaschin, General Director of Blagodat Securities Investment Company, said to UrBC. ‘Russian Standard Bank is a well-known business, so its current problems might actually hurt some other

Russian Standard Bank stopped giving cash loans to private individuals for the time being; the bank does not deal in mortgage lending, either. The bank’s top executives describe this as a ‘temporary limit on sales of competitive products’ and say they have to make these sacrifices because of changes in their tariffs and terms of credit. ‘It could be that Russian Standard Bank stopped dealing in cash loans due to a number of complaints coming from the law-enforcement agencies and Rospotrebnadzor (the state consumer rights watchdog),’ Director of Accord Invest’s Ural branch Konstantin Selyanin

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of natural persons’ deposits and investments in Universal Bank valid for over 3 years went down by 41.26% (from 97.936 million RUR to 57.527 million RUR) in January-August 2007.

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of non-profit NGOs’ deposits in UralFinPromBank valid for 1 to 3 years went down by 93.39% (from 5.14 million RUR to 340,000 RUR) in January-August 2007.

ChTPZ Group Chairman Alexander Fedorov and Director of Chelyabinsk physico-mathematical lyceum No. 31 Alexander Popov signed a cooperation agreement on September 1, 2007. The agreement is aimed at providing the enterprise with highly qualified employees in the near future, ChTPZ Group’s press officer reports. The company’s management met both the teachers and the parents’ boards at the beginning of September. Besides, a tour of the company’s plants was organized for them. ‘I feel this agreement between the school and the plant is a good thing. This is something that is in keeping up with the

According to the Central Bank of Russia, volume of natural persons’ deposits and investments in Plato Bank valid for 91 to 180 days went down by 23.97% (from 3.61 million RUR to 2.745 million RUR) in January-August 2007.

Sverdlovsk Region’s draft budget for the year 2008 was approved of by Sverdlovsk Region Duma Budget, Finance, and Taxes Committee (chaired by Vladimir Tereshkov) at a meeting attended by deputy chairs Askhat Masaev and Elena Chechunova, committee members Anatoly Maltsev and Georgiy Perskiy, the regional Minister of Finance Maria Serova, acting Sverdlovsk Region Minister of Economics and Labor Nikolai Bespamyatnikh, chairman of the Accounts Chamber Andrei Izmodenov, and some representatives of the Governor, of Sverdlovsk Region Government, of the region’s taxation bodies, and of the Institute

Severnaya Kazna stopped accepting UnionCard and STB-Card plastic cards on September 20, 2007 when ATM and point-of-sale terminal transactions became no longer available for this group of cardholders. The reason for this is that Bank VTB 24, who used to be UnionCard’s calculating agent, stopped cooperating with the business.

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of for-profit self-regulatory organizations’ deposits in VUZ Bank valid for 91 to 180 days went down by 100% (from 11.341 million RUR to zero) in January-August 2007.

URSA Bank is now among Russia’s fifty banks that are allowed to provide a banker’s guarantee to those willing to get a loan from the Bank of Russia. The full list became available via the Central Bank of Russia’s website on September 19, 2007. The Bank of Russia’s provisions provide for a chance to apply for a loan that would be covered by the Bank given that some commercial bank offers a banker’s guarantee for this. The Bank only accepts guarantees from banks whose credit rating comes to at least B+ (according to Standard & Poor’s or Fitch Ratings) or at least B1 (according to Moody’s).

This year, Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin has so far allotted 120 million RUR to buy homes for the region’s orphans. The spokesperson for the Governor reports there are currently over 16,000 orphans and children without any parental custody in the region. The existing law states that municipalities must make sure such a child gets to keep his or her home upon being sent to an orphanage; if a child does not have a home, he or she must be put on the special waiting list that has names of more than 5,600 children on it at the moment. Most of these children live in orphanages, with

The spokesperson for Evraz Group reports the company has recently completed the independent technical audit procedures in its Urals-based ore mining enterprises. The audits of Vanadium Ore Mining and Processing Enterprise and of Vysokogorskiy Ore Mining and Processing Enterprise were carried out by the UK-based SPK Consulting Ltd’s international consultants. This was the first time Evraz’ Ural companies underwent such an all-rounded examination. The auditors visited the grinding and processing shops, the railway management departments, the blasting shops, and all the mines. They evaluated the

According to the Central Bank of Russia, volume of for-profit self-regulatory organizations’ deposits in Sverdlovsk Gubernskiy Bank valid for 181 days to 1 year went down by 52.25% (from 79.093 million RUR to 37.767 million RUR) in January-August 2007.

‘We’ve stopped placing orders for Nemiroff strong drinks, since our customers no longer buy them. We are not planning on resuming our purchases any time soon,’ Albina’s goods manager Nadezhda Pavlova says. ‘Our store can boast a fairly wide range of strong drinks supplied by both Russian and foreign producers, including some Ukraine-based ones. I believe most of them can compete with TM Nemiroff in terms of quality,’ she notes.

‘Uralvneshtorgbank (as it then was) had a reputation for its trade financing offers; now that it has merged with SibAcademBank, the bank’s trade financing potential has increased dramatically under the new brand,’ Vice President of URSA Bank’s Ural branch Vadim Manin says. ‘Given that URSA Bank is on Russia’s Top 20 largest banks list in terms of net assets, a lot of foreign companies and banks we’ve been doing business with are eager to offer us even more favorable financing terms,’ Mr. Manin notes. ‘Trade financing is an ever-developing product at the moment, so the list of our customers is

Chelyabinsk Tube Rolling Plant and Pervouralsk New Pipe Plant (ChTPZ Group’s largest tube and pipe manufacturers) supplied their consumers with 1,309,000 tons of tubular goods in the eight months of 2007, which is 18% better than in January-August 2006 when the figure only came to 1,111,000 tons. ChTPZ Group sold 717,500 tons of tubes and pipes in the eight months of the year, which exceeds the figures for a year earlier (that is, 611,900 tons) by 17%. These figures include a 26% increase in the amount of large-diameter pipes: it came to 401,300 tons compared with only 317,300 tons of LDPs in

According to the Central Bank of Russia, volume of for-profit self-regulatory organizations’ deposits in Yekaterinburg Municipal Bank valid for 1 to 3 years went down by 59.41% (from 31.78 million RUR to 12.9 million RUR) in January-August 2007.

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of for-profit self-regulatory organizations’ deposits in Pervouralsk Joint Stock Commercial Bank valid for 1 to 3 years went down by 89.13% (from 92 million RUR to 10 million RUR) in January-August 2007.

Stock market experts believe a recent drop in the dollar rate is not likely to affect either the Russian citizens’ well being or the Russian banks’ performance. ‘Even though the U.S. dollar rate went down from 25.4 RUR to 25.18 RUR per dollar within a week, we don’t believe people will start frantically get rid of their dollars,’ SKB-Bank’s Dealing Director Anton Khavin says. ‘The dollar rate started decreasing as early as the beginning of summer when it went past the psychologically significant point of a digit changing 25 RUR per U.S. dollar, and this trend just keeps developing. It looks