‘The bank runs two subsidiaries in Yekaterinburg now; they are called Ural and Yekaterinburg, the latter being based on Impexbank’s subsidiary after the bank merged with Raiffeisen Bank in November 2007. The decision to close down this subsidiary has been brought about by our efforts to improve on the bank’s local subsidiary network. In fact, having two subsidiaries of one and the same bank within one city is economically inexpedient; it makes much more sense to have one subsidiary with several offices. This is why Raiffeisen Bank will only have one Ural subsidiary in Yekaterinburg starting

‘The current state of the stock market actually opens up a number of opportunities. Apart from focusing on the retail services, METCOMBANK has always been working with big customers and was able to prove its good liquidity and dependability, so we still retain a lot of lending potential at the time of a crisis. Therefore the bank can now use this opportunity to expand its client base thanks to the fact that both companies and private individuals are looking for a reliable bank with financially transparent and serious stockholders. Moreover, METCOMBANK can also build up on the assets used to

‘The global stock markets are closed for the Russian issuers’ stock or syndicated loan coordinators at the moment. The only exception to the rule is the large banking consortiums, so getting a syndicated loan this year is extremely complicated, if not altogether impossible,’ claims Accord Invest Investment and Finance Company’s Deputy GD Konstantin Selyanin. Meanwhile, UralTransBank’s Chairman Valeriy Zavodov said in the course of several interviews that the bank intended to get a syndicated loan on the international capital market in February or March 2009. Zavodov explained the company was

Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Eduard Rossel congratulated Renate Schimkoreit on her becoming Germany’s Consul General in Yekaterinburg and spoke about Sverdlovsk Region and Germany’s proactive cooperation in the economic, cultural, and social fields during their meeting. The Governor suggested that they could draft some joint agreements involving the region and some of the German provinces, for instance, Bavaria, as Sverdlovsk Region has all the potential needed for working successfully with it in the industrial field. At the end of the meeting Governor Eduard Rossel and Dr. Renate

ChTPZ Meta has recently Lindemann ЕС-1034 hydraulic sharing press in its Meta Chelyabinsk plant (part of ChTPZ Meta Group). ‘The launch of the new equipment will make it possible to improve on the end product’s quality and to process all kind of scrap metal, which means more of it will be collected in Chelyabinsk Region and the harmful environmental impact caused by storing and recycling of iron will be reduced,’ the company’s press officer says. Head of ChTPZ Meta Yaroslav Zhdan says launching Metso’s equipment is a great step on the way to all of the Group’s division major technical

Sverdlovsk Region’s Ministry of Economics and Labor reports the gross regional product will keep rising by 8% a year on average and will reach approximately 1,666 billion RUR in 2011, compared with only 800.7 billion RUR in 2007 and the prospective 1,004.9 billion RUR in 2008. Experts believe the manufacturing branch (including food and processing industries) and production and distribution of electric power, natural gas, and water will develop most rapidly, while the retail trade and public catering industry’s turnovers are expected to grow by 17% to 22%. The regional salary fund is likely

IncoreMedia and MegaFon-Ural, the mobile operator, are going to launch a special offer dubbed MegaZachet from September 22, 2008 till October 21, 2008. Upon entering the SIM menu’s Entertainment rubric (except for Games/Java section), you get a text message regarding the offer and a part of a certain word alongside with the content you’ve ordered. After you put the five parts of the word, you can forward it to service number 5016 via a text message and get the media content as a prize, provided you get the word right, of course. The first two senders will get an iPod Nano 4Gb player,

‘Mechel-Bank has gone up by fifty-two positions in RBC.Rating’s ranking of Russian banks in the first half of 2008. This means it is now one of Russia’s fastest-growing banks, as we were able to double our business in less than a year. We appreciate it greatly that the bank has made such progress by its 18th anniversary, so we intend to keep this pace up and make it to the Greater Urals’ top five banks over the next five years,’ says Mechel-Bank’s Chair Elena Nesterova. ‘Both Chelyabinsk and Sverdlovsk Regions have recently adopted development programs for 2008-2020, and our primary challenge

The official cost of living in Sverdlovsk Region determined for the last quarter of 2008 came to 4,723 RUR a month, which is 861 RUR, or 22.3% greater than a year earlier. As far as the budgeting structure is concerned, the food expenses went up by 29.9%, fixed bills and fees rose by 25%, the cost of paid services increased by 18.2%, and non-food items spending grew by 10.4%.

Grand Capital, a pharmaceutical holding, acquired 50.46% of Irbit chemical pharmaceutical plant’s common stock. The company did not use to own any of Irbit plant’s shares before.

Kommersant-Dengi came up with its rating of Russia’s Top 100 Banks (in terms of their capital volume as of July 1, 2008). SKB-Bank thus became Sverdlovsk Region’s No.1 and was given the 71st position among the top hundred, the bank’s press officer says. The magazine reports SKB-Bank’s own funds amounted to more than 5 billion RUR on July 1, 2008, which exceeds the bank’s nearest rivals’ performance by 1 billion RUR. This month, SKB-Bank’s own funds have already reached 5.38 billion RUR. SKB-Bank was also one of Sverdlovsk Region’s top three banks in terms of assets. The bank’s assets came to

RBC.Rating has recently come up with the Russian banks’ ranking based on the volume and number of loans offered to small and medium-scale businesses in the first half of 2008. Only two Ural banks were actually featured among the top forty companies on the list, SKB-Bank’s press officer says. The agency’s analysts report the SME lending volumes kept increasing in the six months of 2008; it went up by 22% and amounted to 1.322 trillion RUR. The number of loans given to small enterprises nearly doubled. SKB-Bank topped Ural Federal District-based banks’ rating in terms of the number of loans

URSA Bank has already sold 10, 110 business packages to legal entities and sole traders within a year of launching the offer. The offer that comes in a cardboard box is a set of options that provides for the cash transactions and settlement operations and an easier loan-getting procedure for businesses. The program was launched at the end of September 2007 in Novosibirsk and Yekaterinburg. Now the offer is available in ninety-two Russian cities. ‘The sales rise by 15% a month on average. We’ve already provided our customers with 2.5 billion worth of loan limits under the business package

The top executives of Renova-StroyGroup took part in Sochi 2008, the 7th international economic forum, the spokesperson for the company reports. The developer presented three projects it’s working on in Krasnodar and was involved in the forum’s business agenda. Renova-StroyGroup’s President Veniamin Golubitskiy made a report at the French-Russian round table discussion and participated in the Russian-U.S. round table discussion within the framework of the two countries’ Business Dialogue on September 20, 2008.

The Head of Sverdlovsk Region Government Viktor Koksharov spoke to the Federal Minister for European and International Affairs of the Republic of Austria Ursula Plassnik about the feasibility of setting up Austria’s Consulate General in the mid-Urals during his recent visit to Austria. Koksharov explained that the introduction of a foreign country’s official representation normally boosted the trade end economic relations’ development and greatly supported the two countries’ cooperation of all kinds. He said there were currently fifteen countries’ representations in Sverdlovsk Region. These

RBC.Rating came up with a report on the Russian banks’ performance in the first half of 2008. The Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development was given the 17th position in the ranking of Most Customer-Oriented Banks, according to the volume of collateral-free loans it offered the customers in the six months of 2008. This came to 6.24 billion RUR (92.93% better than a year earlier) and was actually the top result in Ural Federal District. ‘The Bank of Russia reports banks are starting to slow down on consumer loans. Their total private individual lending portfolio rose by 20.8% in the first

The newest gas-cleaning system is going to be installed at Pervouralsk New Pipe Plant. This will be a part of the enterprise’s steel-smelting complex meant for manufacturing cast-steel ingots for seamless pipes with the capacity of 950,000 tons a year. The capacity of the gas-cleaning unit comes to 2.1 million cubic meters an hour, which means 99.6% of process gas (the by-product of steel-smelting procedure) can be trapped and cleaned in accordance with the Russian environmental legislation and the European air polluting norms. Thanks to the new equipment, the final dust content in the air

‘The state of the Russian stock market is certainly alarming; one must admit, however, that there are no fundamental reasons for the panic we’ve been witnessing over the last few days. Whatever is happening now is the emotional reaction to the international events. As a matter of fact, both the country’s economy on the whole and the banking sector in particular are stable enough, which can be proved, among other things, by the rating agencies’ reports,’ METCOMBANK’s CFO Vadim Bambozov said to an UrBC reporter. ‘The market has been in a bit of trouble for over a year now. It is only

The Federal Antimonopoly Service found Koltsovo Airport of Yekaterinburg guilty of violating the federal legislation on the protection of competition (Article 10, part 1). As the airport agreed to eliminate the violation of its own accord, no report will be filed on the company, but it will still have to face administrative responsibility (based on Article 14.31 of the Administrative Offense Code). The inquiry into the case began after Siberia Airlines complained about Koltsovo Airport’s avoiding an agreement related to rendering ground handling service to their aircraft. Koltsovo Airport is

Bank Severnaya Kazna is now only cashing customers’ deposits if they had made an appointment in advance. UralBusinessConsulting Agency of Information and Analytics found out that one can get the money from one’s deposit twenty four hours after making the appointment (that has to be made before 3 PM the day before).