Koltsovo airport of Yekaterinburg resumed working after its runway and parking areas had been properly cleaned. ‘It took fourteen vehicles and a team of workers to remove all the snow that was there,’ the airport’s PR expert Olga Ladeischikova said to UrBC. The airport remained closed for the whole morning of February 21, 2008 due to a continuous heavy snowfall.

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of loans given by SberInvestBank to sole traders for 1 to 3 years went down by 22.22% (from 1.8 million RUR to 1.4 million RUR) in December 2007-January 2008.

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of loans given by VUZ Bank to sole traders despite overdraft dropped by 100% (from 1.397 million RUR to zero) in December 2007-January 2008.

The share price of Alemar Index MICEX (the open unit investment trust run by Alemar Management Company) went down by 10.43% between January 1, 2008 and February 15, 2008. These data are available from Alemar Management Company’s official website.

Settlement services and cash transactions are the most popular baking service with the Russian businesses at the moment, a recent marketing research on the banking and insurance services to businesses shows. Loans were the second most popular service, as over 45% of respondents admitted they borrowed money from banks at some point or other. Bank cards and salary accounts were rated as the third most popular service, with 43% of those surveyed using it, followed by international payments (used by 21.2% of respondents) and bank deposits (used by 19.5% of the surveyed companies’ top managers).

Ural Treasures Bank is now offering its customers a new service known as Internet Bank. The service is available for both businesses and private individuals, who can now enjoy a full range of banking services and easy account management opportunities online without even setting foot inside the bank office. To use the service, any modern computer with an Internet connection supporting Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, Mozilla, or FireFox will do. E-banking is compatible with Windows, Linux, and other operating systems and ensures a guaranteed safety level through Crypto C system

According to the National Managers’ League’s profitability ranking of unit investment trusts as of February 18, 2008, Birzhevaya Ploschad - Index MICEX (the Bank of Moscow Management Company) has gone down by 11.57% since the beginning of the year.

The banks located in Ural Federal District managed to raise the volume of investments by private individuals by 38.5% last year, including a 10% increase in October-December 2007, the Deposit Insurance Agency says. Sverdlovsk Region-based banks did particularly well, as their natural person deposit portfolio went up by 45%, which is better than the results reached by the banks based in Tyumen Region (34.8%), Chelyabinsk Region (33.1%), or Kurgan Region (24.1%). Only the banks of Sverdlovsk and Tyumen Regions experienced some natural person deposit portfolio growth (by 12.6% and 12.9%

'The number of consumer loan cooperatives like RichBrokerCreditService Active, Active Invest, and Grand Capital has been increasing in Sverdlovsk Region lately,‘ Deputy GD and Director of Accord Invest’s Ural branch Konstantin Selyanin said to UrBC. In the meantime, the representatives of Accord Invest’s Ural branch have placed over fifteen complaints with the Federal Antimonopoly Service’s regional division since February 1, 2008. The complaints are all related to these cooperatives’ activity. 'Five more cooperatives were introduced in the region within the last two or three

The share price of Uralskiy Krai (the unit investment trust run by Investstroy Management Company) went down by 18.94% (from 173,601.81 RUR to 145,958.12 RUR) between December 29, 2007 and January 31, 2008. These data are available from Investstroy’s official website.

'Uralsvyazinform’s apparent inability to get a loan can largely be explained by extraneous factors: after all, the liquidity crisis unfolds on a global scale, so Russian banks that used to get cheap resources abroad easily now have a very hard time getting them,’ Unicom Partner Investment Company’s Asset Management Director Sergei Kaliberda said to UrBC. In the meantime, the mobile operator started accepting applications from banks willing to offer them a loan on February 20, 2008. The company offered the potential creditors four 2.65-billion-ruble lots. The company has already had a

First Deputy Head of Sverdlovsk Region Government and Minister of Economics and Labor Mikhail Maximov was elected the new Chairman of Sverdlovsk Gubernskiy Bank’s Board of Directors. He actually succeeded Ms Galina Kovaleva, who had been appointed by the region’s government and had up to the summer of 2007 been First Deputy Head of Sverdlovsk Region Government.

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of loans given by Uralprivatbank to for-profit self-regulatory organizations for 1 to 3 years went down by 20.21% (from 217.128 million RUR to 173.242 million RUR) in December 2007-January 2008.

The value of net assets of Energy – Mixed Investments (the unit investment trust) managed by Eurogreen Management Company Ltd. went down by 1.4% between February 14, 2008 and February 15, 2008. According to Eurogreen’s website, the company’s net assets decreased from 3,093,749.87 RUR on February 14, 2008 to 3,050,377.87 RUR on February 15, 2008.

According to the Central Bank of Russia, volume of loans given by Bank24.ru to for-profit self-regulatory organizations for 31 to 90 days went down by 72% (from 12.5 million RUR to 3.5 million RUR) in December 2007-January 2008.

URSA Bank has recently launched the new version of www.ursabank.ru, the company’s official website, as part of the bank’s brand introduction strategy. Changes are mostly related to website’s design. The site now looks brighter, more spacious and lightsome and therefore corresponds with the bank’s working style and image much better, the bank’s press officer reports. The site developers were trying to make it as user-friendly as possible, taking into account the region-specific features and the symbolic dichotomy of the bank’s Siberian and Ural divisions. The website offers the bank’s

The volume of SKB-Bank’s net assets came to 29.48 billion RUR on February 1, 2008, which is 11.3 billion RUR better than a year earlier, while the bank’s loan portfolio increased by over 12 billion RUR and amounted to 18.67 billion RUR, the bank’s press officer reports. SKB-Bank managed to attract 26.15 billion RUR worth of investments (including 8.94 billion RUR worth of private individuals’ investments) by February 1, 2008. The bank thus does better than most regional bank and is, in fact, Sverdlovsk Region’s No.1 bank in terms of consumer loan volumes.

PriceWaterhouseCoopers, the international auditing company, announced it was going to set up an office in Yekaterinburg. The decision to this extent was made at PriceWaterhouseCoopers Auditing Department’s representative Stanley Ruth’s meeting with Deputy Mayor of Yekaterinburg Viktor Konteev. Mr. Konteev’s press officer reports the council is already looking for the suitable premises, and the company is planning to make a presentation on their activity to the local business community very soon. Mr. Ruth says PriceWaterhouseCoopers is planning to attract investments on the car parts market,

Uralprivatbank’s consumer loan portfolio decreased by .4% and came to 3,317,729,000 RUR in January 2008. These data are available from a report on the dynamics of consumer loan portfolio growth of the largest banks in Sverdlovsk, Chelyabinsk, and Tyumen Regions and Perm Territory in January 2008 to be found on Bank Severnaya Kazna’s official website.

Bank Severnaya Kazna’s Board of Directors decided to go through with the additional issue of 6,170,000 ordinary registered uncertified shares with face value of 10 RUR apiece, while the price of the shares was determined at 162.075 RUR per share. This share issue will probably be acquired by East Capital Explorer Financial Institutions Fund AB the day after the issue has been registered by the state. This information was provided by the bank in compliance with the demand that any issuer and/or a joint stock company must promptly reveal any data related to their activity that might influence