Avtostrada Corporation Ltd set up an official subsidiary in Novosibirsk that will offer its services to customers from Novosibirsk, Omsk, Tomsk, and Kemerov Regions as well as to people living in Altai and Krasnoyarsk Territories. The introduction of the new branch was part of the company’s geographical growth and subsidiary network expansion program targeted at making the business as customer-friendly as possible. ‘Avtostrada broke into the Siberian market in April 2007, and six months was enough for us to understand that setting up a subsidiary would probably be a good idea, as it can both

The Expert Ural magazine came up with the rating of the Ural Region’s banks; four banks from Tyumen Region, three banks based in Sverdlovsk Region, and three Chelyabinsk Region banks filled the top ten positions. SKB-Bank was rated as the region’s most successful bank in terms of asset growth; the volume of the bank’s assets amounted to more than 24.1 billion RUR on July 1, 2007, which is 25% better than three months earlier, the magazine observes. SKB-Bank was also named the Urals’ No.1 in terms of consumer loan portfolio growth (the increase reached 43% over just three months) as well as in

UC RUSAL is going to spend $1.4bn on its seven-year environmental protection program. 'All of UC RUSAL’s member companies are to get $1.4bn each; besides, we are planning on cutting the amount of harmful emissions by 1.5 times by 2015,’ the company’s International Projects Director Alexander Livshits announced after signing a protocol on cooperation with the United Nations. UC RUSAL exports its produce to seventy different countries and is responsible for 12.5% of the global aluminum output and for 16% of the global production of alumina.

‘Nizhneserginskiy Hardware Plant (part of Maxi Group) might actually have to close down due to lack of working assets,’ Maxi Group’s PR Director Alexander Popov said to UrBC. Maxi Group CEO Nikolai Maximov has already applied to Russian President Vladimir Putin for state support, since the company owes some 38 billion RUR to about fifty banks, whereas the banks themselves refuse to go for refinancing because of a recent financial crisis in the U.S. Mr. Maximov says Maxi Group has to spend all of its working assets on debt payments, which has been affecting their production quite badly (that

'I am very dissatisfied with both Sverdlovsk Region Railways’ investment plan and its current condition,’ Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Eduard Rossel said at a press conference on October 31, 2007. The Governor feels the problem needs to be solved in the nearest possible future, as poor railways are hindering the region’s economic development. 'We have to be dealing with the railway issues faster than with the economic ones,’ he observed.

A press conference on the bank’s new developmental stages organized by URSA Bank’s top management and the bank’s business partners was held in Interfax’s press center. It was announced that Russia New Growth Fund managed by Troika Capital Partners (TCP) had bought URSA Bank’s shareholding consisting of 7.4% of the bank’s ordinary shares acquired from S.M. Capital Group. Experts’ estimates of the bank’s capitalization range from $2.5bn to $2.4bn. URSA Bank has been doing business with Troika Dialog for a quite a while now; their latest success story involved going through with two preference