Six electrolysis experts from UC RUSAL’s Ural smelter are going to celebrate the Metallurgist’s Day in Nigeria, where they have been assisting in the launch of a potline at RUSAL’s Alscon smelter for over a month now, the company’s spokesperson for the Urals Roman Lukichev said to UrBC. ‘The smelter sent its best experts to Nigeria; they are now helping the local workers to install modern bath tanks as well as doing some personnel training. Apart from the Ural smelter’s employees, the Nigerian workers are helped by experts from UC RUSAL’s Nadvoitskiy and Sayanogorskiy smelters,’ Lukichev

Talisman, a language training chain, announced they were going to raise prices by 30% to 40% in the fall. The chain’s director Natalia Sorokina says the price increase has been brought about by the general state of the market. ‘We don’t launch any price increases during the year, and our last academic year was no exception. In the meantime, though, the rent grew much more expensive. Besides, a shortage of skilled teachers makes it necessary to offer them better salaries. The price growth at the beginning of the season is a traditional thing, it’s just that this year it happens to be rather

The Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development offers better loan terms between July 16, 2008 and September 30, 2008. Any customer who gets a consumer loan or an express loan within this period will only have to pay a 12% annual interest rate. In addition, consumer loans can now be taken for a period of up to seven years (provided you find a guarantor for your loan), the bank’s press officer reports. What is more, the bank’s customers can now apply for a second loan while still paying back their first one. Borrowers with a nice credit record can apply for a consumer loan or an express loan

VIZ Stal reports Duferco Group has agreed to sell a 70% shareholding of Verkh-Isetskiy Metallurgical Plant. However, the transaction is still subject to further negotiations and will probably have been finalized by the end of the year.

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of loans given by UralFinPromBank to sole traders for 91 to 180 days went down by 70.83% (from 27.5 million RUR to 8.02 million RUR) in January-June 2008.

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin met heads of the region’s municipalities to discuss the performance of agricultural cooperatives in the region. The region’s Minister for Agriculture Ivan Feklin said there were twenty-one cooperatives in the area (and six new ones on the way) dealing in the purchases of milk, meat, potatoes, and vegetables. Some of them also processed the foods with machinery. Chairman of the local cooperatives community Josef Ashkinadze said they had a special development plan for 2008-2012, with focus on processing of foods. For one, ten meat-processing shops were

‘SKB-Bank introduced some new interest rates on deposits even before the Central Bank raised the refinancing rate,’ SKB-Bank’s Deposit Operations Director Denis Belogurov said to UrBC. The Bank of Russia increased the annual refinancing rate from 10.75% to 11% on July 11, 2008. ‘SKB-Bank raised the interest rate it offers on the Gold Standard deposit by 1% on July 1, 2008. In addition, the interest rate offered on World Standard, the bank’s most popular deposit, is to go up 1% and thus to reach 14.5% a year on August 1, 2008. This figure offsets even the most pessimistic inflation forecasts

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of loans given by Bank Uralfinance to sole traders for 181 days to 1 year went down by 49.89% (from 6.269 million RUR to 3.141 million RUR) in January-June 2008.

The spokesperson for Sinara Group reports SKB-Bank’s BOD Chairman Mikhail Khodorovskiy was elected the Chairman of Sinara Group’s Board of Directors. The company’s Board of Directors now consists of Dmitriy Pumpyanskiy, Alexander Braverman, Andrei Kaplunov, Adrian Cobb, Sergey Papin, Alexander Pumpyanskiy, Dmitriy Farber, Mikhail Khodorovskiy, Igor Khmelevskiy, and Alexander Shiryaev.

Ural Treasures Bank was given the 230th position in RosBusinessConsulting’s rating of Russia’s Top 500 most profitable banks (published on April 1, 2008). Besides, the bank was given the 108th position in Bankir.ru’s rating of the country’s 200 largest banks in terms of ATM turnover in April 2008, which was nine positions better than a year earlier. Then, Ural Treasures Bank was rated 189th largest bank in the first quarter of 2008 by RosBusinessConsulting and 91st position in Bankir.ru’s ranking of top 100 largest banks in terms of private individuals’ deposits compiled on May 1, 2008.

‘S7 Airlines started selling tickets for Yekaterinburg-Moscow and Yekaterinburg-Sochi flights on July 16, 2008. Both flights take off in Koltsovo airport of Yekaterinburg; to make this happen, we’ve negotiated with the airport and were given some confirmed time slots,’ S7 Airlines’ press officer Irina Kolesnikova said to UrBC. A little earlier, however, the Federal Antimonopoly Service reported they were considering suing Koltsovo airport for its reluctance to sign a slot agreement with S7 Airlines. ‘We’ve settled things down and are planning to launch flights from Yekaterinburg as soon as

According to the Central Bank of Russia, volume of loans given by Bank24.ru to private individuals for 181 days to 1 year dropped by 51.74% (from 27.573 million RUR to 13.306 million RUR) in January-June 2008.

Yekaterinburgnefteprodukt and LukoilPermnefteprodukt were found guilty of violating the federal legislation on the protection of competition, Sverdlovsk Region’s Federal Antimonopoly Service’s department director Yulia Anisimova said to UrBC. The two companies have been sued for a price collusion that involved AI 76 (80), AI 95 (96), and diesel fuel. The collusion lasted from January 1, 2007 to March 27, 2008. ‘These are two different organizations, so they work with different oil product suppliers; they have different transportation and storage terms, and so on. This is why they couldn’t

RBC daily reports Saint-Petersburg-based LSR Group made an official statement related to their recent acquisition of Yekaterinburg-based NOVA-Group (one of the local market’s major developers). According to LSR Group’s General Director Igor Levit, the enterprise has already invested some $500m in the development of the building industry in Sverdlovsk Region. The terms of the transaction state that LSR Group is to get NOVA Group’s land allotments and industrial enterprises, while the developer gets to keep its image-building projects. LSR Group is planning to set up a company responsible for

President of MMK Management Company Viktor Rashnikov signed a provision on raising the basic rates and wages for Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) employees. Both the rates and the wages are to go up by 9% on July 1, 2008; this is part of the general program aimed at raising MMK employees’ pay. This is the second time the increase in wages has been introduced this year: the basic rates and wages have already been raised by 5% in April 2008. This regular indexation allows the enterprise to make sure the metallurgists’ wages leave the inflation rate behind. In 2007, MMK workers’ average

Bank VTB’s Board of Directors decided to close down the company’s representation in India.

The Federal Antimonopoly Service looked into the country’s metallurgical market problems and took legal action against some of Mechel enterprises. These are: Mechel Trading Company, Yuzhniy Kuzbass, and Yakutugol, all of which can be charged with violation of competition protection law through abuse of their dominating position on the market. The Service is worried metallurgical coal and coal concentrate might become more expensive on the Russian market, so queries were sent to all the major producers in order to find out how much coal they were going to supply on the domestic market and how

Chelyabinsk-based SOT, a company dealing in production of pipeline bends and part of Rimera (ChTPZ Group’s O&G maintenance division) has been successfully audited by QS Azia Sertik (based in Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan) and proved the compliance of its quality management system with the ST RK ISO 9001-2001 standards. The above-mentioned standard has been adopted by the Republic of Kazakhstan as the official state standard and is based on the international ISO 9001:2000 one. The examination and assessment of its certified quality management system is necessary for SOT to be able to deliver its

SKB-Bank’s development indicators showed some impressive growth dynamics in the first half of 2008. The volume of the bank’s assets came to more than 35.9 billion RUR on July 1, 2008, which was over 6 billion RUR better than at the beginning of the year. SKB-Bank’s loan portfolio increased by 5.5 billion RUR and amounted to 24.8 billion RUR on July 1, 2008. As for the investments the bank managed to attract, these reached 31.4 billion RUR on July 1, 2008 compared with 27.2 billion RUR on January 1, 2008. The private individuals’ investment portfolio went up particularly fast by 3.3 billion