According to the Central Bank of Russia, volume of loans given by Uralfinprombank to natural persons for 181 days to 1 year went down by 16.12% (from 134.791 million RUR to 113.057 million RUR) in December 2007-January 2008.

According to the National Managers’ League’s profitability ranking of unit investment trusts as of February 21, 2008, the share price of Raiffeisen Telecommunications (Raiffeisen Capital Management Company) has gone down by 19.14% since the beginning of the year.

According to the National Managers’ League’s profitability ranking of unit investment trusts as of February 21, 2008, the share price of CIT Fortis Telecommunications (CIT Fortis Investment Management Company) has gone down by 18.28% since the beginning of the year.

'If the regional division of the state board of experts does not approve of their construction project, Aston might be forced to pull down the building they have been putting up at 57 Radischev St. It all depends on whether the builder has actually got the construction permit,’ says Svetlana Korabel, Director of Jus Cogens Law Firm. According to Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Sverdlovsk Region’s division of the state board of experts looked into the project and was planning to turn it down on February 20, 2008, since the experts found a number of problems in this project. In the meantime, the local

The world’s largest producer of aluminum and alumina, UC RUSAL has recently launched ALSCON plant in Nigeria. The company is planning to fully upgrade all the production processes and make the plant produce 197,000 tons of aluminum a year in 2010. The upgrading program will cost about $300m to complete. Having bought ALSCON’s shareholding in February 2007, RUSAL decided to revive the plant that had been idle for eight years. The upgrading program covers both the construction jobs and the improvements in the technological field. The plant consists of two electrolysis departments, a

The new Board of Directors was elected in the course of an EGM held by Ural Treasures Bank’s shareholders. The new Board now consists of V. Balabanov, A. Gusev, A. Danilin, I. Mukhametdinov, and V. Urvantseva. Besides, the bank moved on from being a close joint stock company to being an open one. V. Balabanov was re-elected BOD Chairman, while Alexander Vasilyev was appointed acting CEO and Chairman of the Supervisory Board, thus succeeding Mr. Markov, who is now employed by Moscow-based Rus-Bank, the bank’s press officer said to UrBC. Ural Treasures Bank is Ural Federal District’s 15th

LUKOIL Permnefteprodukt introduced new prices for gasoline sold in Perm Territory, Kirov Region, and Sverdlovsk Region. Regular EURO 92 and Super EURO 98 now cost 20.5 RUR and 23.9 RUR per liter, respectively, which is 3% and 1.7% more expensive than the previous prices and 18.50% and 14.35% more expensive than in February 2007. The increase in prices was explained by the need to switch to the EURO standard gasoline whose quality is better in many ways, the growing wholesale market prices, and rising tariffs, which means LUKOIL has to spend more on transportation and storage.

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of loans given by Tagilbank to natural persons for 1 to 3 years went down by 5.97% (from 196.167 million RUR to 184.449 million RUR) in December 2007-January 2008.

'The scheme that gives a member of a cooperative a chance to buy an apartment for 50% of the price does not seem to be very transparent or clear. The cooperative must explain where they will get the other half that will later be paid to the bank through a mortgage loan,’ Director of Yarmarka real estate agency Dmitriy Gusev said to UrBC. In the meantime, Yekaterinburg is full of ads that offer buying a place through cooperatives. The cooperatives claim you only have to pay 50% of the apartment’s full cost, with the other half to be paid by RusFinance. Then the cooperative will allegedly

URSA Bank completed two trade financing transactions worth $4.4m in February 2008. Firstly, the bank received $1.4m for a term of one year from Bank of Montreal (BMO Group, Canada) in order to finance the import contracts of a Tomsk-based trading firm. Secondly, URSA Bank got $3m for eighteen months from the Japanese Sumitomo Mitsui Corporation in order to finance the purchase of machinery for a Yekaterinburg-based medical equipment producer. Trade financing is quite popular on the banking services market nowadays, as Russian companies need to buy some modern equipment abroad as well as

Sberbank’s Ural branch’s consumer loan portfolio exceeded 83.3 billion RUR at the beginning of 2008, which is 29.3 billion RUR better than a year earlier. So far, the bank has provided its customers with 341,000 loans. 'This impressive loan portfolio growth results from the ongoing improvements our crediting schemes are given, and the emergence of more subsidiaries. Most of the loans we offered our customers were no-purpose consumer loans, automobile loans, and mortgages. We gave thousands of people an opportunity to move into a better home, buy a car, go on holiday or get some new

'We happen to be Societe Generale’s daughter enterprise, and yet we are quite independent from its financial successes or failures. Despite the current problems, Societe Generale will probably provide us with the resources it was expecting to allot. I personally don’t feel the crisis has affected our company in any way, and we haven’t had to cut down on our development program yet. However, the things that happened were not particularly good ones because they mean we’ll still have to work as hard as at the very beginning,’ BSGV-Yekaterinburg’s GD Andrei Pavin announced at the press

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of loans given by Pervouralsk Joint Stock Commercial Bank to sole traders for 181 days to 1 year went down by 17.08% (from 17.308 million RUR to 14.352 million RUR) in December 2007-January 2008.

According to the Central Bank of Russia, volume of loans given by Uralfinance Commercial Bank to for-profit self-regulatory organizations for 91 to 180 days went down by 5.52% (from 22.009 million RUR to 20.795 million RUR) in December 2007-January 2008.

The regional authorities might ban the construction of an apartment block at 57 Radischev St. (Yekaterinburg) currently supervised by Aston Building Company. According to Rossiyskaya Gazeta, Sverdlovsk Region’s division of the state board of experts looked into the project and was planning to turn it down on February 20, 2008, since the experts found a number of problems in this project. In the meantime, the local council is not allowed to let any builder start working unless the experts approve of their project. The building, however, is half-finished already, even though the people from the

The value of net assets of Energy - Mixed Investments (the unit investment trust) managed by Eurogreen Management Company Ltd. went down by 1.64% between February 19, 2008 and February 20, 2008. According to Eurogreen’s website, the company’s net assets decreased from 3,090,443.18 RUR on February 19, 2008 to 3,040,669.25 RUR on February 20, 2008.

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of loans given by Perviy Respublikanskiy Bank to for-profit self-regulatory organizations for up to 30 days went down by 78.69% (from 33.093 million RUR to 7.05million RUR) in December 2007-January 2008.

According to the National Managers’ League’s profitability ranking of unit investment trusts, the share price of CIT Fortis Russian Oil (CIT Fortis Investment Management Company) has gone down by 12.38% since the beginning of the year.

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of loans given by UralTransBank to for-profit self-regulatory organizations despite overdraft went down by 35.45% (from 100.165 million RUR to 64.653 million RUR) in December 2007-January 2008.

'People tended to open more ruble deposits rather than the foreign currency ones in the last quarter of the year, so the volume of ruble deposits in banks located in Ural Federal District rose by 10.2% compared to an 8.3% increase in the volume of foreign currency deposits in October-December 2007,’ the Deposit Insurance Agency’s report says. Kurgan Region had the smallest share of foreign currency deposits in its banks (it only came to 1% of the total deposit volume on January 1, 2008), while Tyumen Region had the greatest share which amounted to 10.4% of the total deposit volume.