Moscow’s public prosecution authorities (namely, their Investigative Committee) initiated a criminal lawsuit against Auchan hypermarket chain after it was detected that some poor quality seafood had been on sale in the stores. ‘After the fact of one of Auchan’s divisions selling bad foods had been verified, our investigative authorities took legal action with charge based on Article 237 of the Russian Federation Criminal Code (Manufacturing, storage, and transportation or sale of products or rendering of services that don’t meet the determined safety requirements),’ the authorities report.

Two and a half months after acquiring Bank Severnaya Kazna’s controlling shareholding, Alfa-Bank offered the first loan to Bank Severnaya Kazna’s business customer. Alfa-Bank went through with the controlling shareholding’s purchase on November 30, 2008. The spokesperson for the bank reports the loan (needed to build up on the company’s floating assets) was given to one of Yekaterinburg-based trading firms.

URSA Bank made a total of 3.5 billion RUR worth of interest yield payments to its investors last year; these figures exceeded those for a year earlier (that is, 2.6 billion RUR) by one quarter. The better part of the payments was made in the summer and fall, since the bank’s depositors were apparently interested in saving up for a vacation or an apartment remodeling. ‘Our Magnificent Seven, Special, and Guaranteed Income deposit types were last year’s favorites. The terms of these deposits provide a combination of trouble-free savings and an impressive profit. What is more, a customer can top

Uralmash Machine-Building Corporation still hasn’t been able to cope with the arrears of wages in full. The enterprise’s employees say they only got their wages for December 2008, whereas their January pay is still pending. In addition, the company gave up on its welding engineering sector for the time being, while a number of production shops have been switched to shorter hours. In the meantime, the recent checks completed by the public prosecution authorities revealed that Yekaterinburg-based Uralmashzavod had over 60 million RUR worth of wage arrears, the spokesperson for the Russian

Malakhit Company made the decision to sell a set of restaurants located at 36 Malyshev St. in Yekaterinburg, the company’s press officer said to an UrBC reporter. The set comprises three places: Gradara, Pivnoy Bar’on, and Grand Buffet restaurants and Divan, the night club. ‘This measure is expected to give us some additional resources that will allow the company to keep the rest of the business, including a fast food chain that we run,’ Malakhit’s press officer explained. ‘The economic downfall that started in August 2008 made the lion’s share of our generally loyal customers give up on

Sverdlovsk Region’s division of Rosprirodnadzor (the state environmental watchdog) carried out a scheduled inspection of a foundry based in Kamensk-Uralskiy. Ten environmental violations were detected in the course of the inspection, so the company will now have to pay 150,000 RUR in fines. A 10,000-ruble fine was imposed on the business for violating the water use regulations, a 40,000-ruble one – for violating the open air protection rules, and a 100,000-ruble one – for violating the rules of waste treatment, the spokesperson for the regional division of Rosprirodnadzor says. In addition to

Bank Severnaya Kazna’s additional office located at 39a Pobeda St. in Kamensk-Uralskiy is to stop operating on February 16, 2009. The news has been announced via the bank’s official website.

The investments and savings placed by private individuals in SKB-Bank have recently amounted to more than 15.5 billion RUR (compared with 13.7 billion RUR at the beginning of 2009). ‘Our Patriot deposit type definitely enjoys the greatest demand at the moment, primarily because the annual interest rate is set at 16.01% for the first one hundred days of the deposit period, while the minimum amount of money you must deposit only comes to 10,000 RUR. What is more, all the depositors get a chance to win UAZ Patriot, an off-road vehicle. In fact, over 5.5 billion RUR have been placed with the bank

‘The dramatic plummeting of the bank’s net assets last December was brought about by having to create the additional reserves to make up for the possible bad debt damages, as Bank Severnaya Kazna’s loan portfolio lost some of its strength in the winter of 2008,’ the spokesperson for Alfa-Bank said to an UrBC representative. Bank Severnaya Kazna’s net assets actually dropped by over 7.1 billion RUR (from 43.1 billion RUR to 35.9 billion RUR), or by 16.5% in December 2008. The decrease occurred after the bank had been acquired by Alfa-Bank. The financial data to this extent were published via

Bank24.ru informed its private customers about the availability of loans to them again, ‘anti-crisis loans’ this time. The interest rates come to at least 25% a year, with the loan period coming to anything between three and thirty-six months. The minimum amount of money one can borrow from a bank is 15,000 RUR.

URSA Bank retired ?59m worth of bonds and liabilities at par by February 11, 2009 after declaring early in January that they were planning on buying out their ?400m-issue of Euro bonds. The schedule of this buy-out program provides for acquiring the Euro bonds issued by URSA Finance Plc in May 2007; the coupon yield was determined at 7% a year, while the bonds were to be in circulation for three years. URSA Bank intends to buy the bonds on the public market as well as through private deals. ‘URSA Bank is known as a company that cares about its investors and partners’ interests and offers all

Ural Federal District’s division of the Federal Financial Market Service’s officials carried out a scheduled inspection on Bank24.ru’s premises and detected that the bank was actually violating the Russian legislation. As a result, the company was ordered to eliminate these violations.

The checks and inspections carried out by Sverdlovsk Region’s public prosecution authorities revealed that Yekaterinburg-based Uralmashzavod had over 60 million RUR worth of wage arrears, the spokesperson for the Russian Federation’s General Public Prosecutor reports. Upon the authorities’ order, the wages were paid to the workers; besides, the employees were given 777,700 RUR to make up for the delay. What is more, Uralmash-Drilling Machinery also owed its workers 10 million RUR worth of wages; following the inspection and the public prosecution authorities’ order, all the sums were handed

Leader Holding Company sold its 33.3216% shareholding in CIT Capital to STANMORLAND INVESMENTS LIMITED and CHARISMA COMMERCIAL GROUP INC. The former bought a 24% shareholding in CIT Capital; the latter acquired the 9.3216% one. The court actually declared CIT Capital insolvent on December 27, 2008; the decision was taken on the basis of CIT Capital’s application where the company explained that they owed their creditors over 3.982 billion RUR. At the moment, the business has 16.708 million RUR worth of top-priority commitments, whereas a number of general jurisdiction, arbitration, and

SKB-Bank topped the Urals’ businesses activity index rating compiled by Kommersant Publishing House’s analysts; the No.1 position was scored by the bank in the Finances category. ‘SKB-Bank was definitely the company most frequently mentioned or featured on Kommersant-Ural’s pages last year, leaving all the other banks behind,’ the bank’s press officer says. The rating assessors report the bank was actually referred to by the magazine thirty-two times in 2008 in comparison with twenty times a year earlier (which still secured the bank the top position in the rating in 2007). As for 2006,

‘The citizens of the EU’s sixteen countries located within the Euro zone came to believe in the banking system at the time of a global financial crisis,’ Bank Monetniy Dom reports. According to the European Central Bank, people started to spend less and to place more money on bank deposits. By the end of December 2008, for instance, 1,795 trillion euros had been kept in the form of bank deposits within the Euro zone, which exceeded the figures for 2007 by 1.6%. A certain increase in the bank deposit volume could be noticed in Russia as well. For one, Russian people deposited over 400 billion

Metallosnabzheniye I Sbyt magazine came up with the results on the survey targeted at selecting the best ferrous and non-ferrous metals manufacturers and traders in the second half of 2008. The magazine reports their rating is compiled on the basis of the questionnaires filled in by the customers and the market experts’ responses. As for the criteria, what the magazine took into account was the delivery volumes, services rendered, the quality of produce, and the ability to meet one’s contractual obligations in full. In addition, the rating was also influenced by the factors that kept

Yekaterinburg-based Koltsovo Airport and Rusgrad Construction Company are believed to have violated the law on infrastructure systems hookup, the regional public prosecution authorities for transportation report. While Rusgrad was putting up a hotel complex on the land allotment provided by Koltsovo Airport, the electricity was being supplied without any permission from Ural Federal District’s division of Rostechnadzor (the state technological safety watchdog). What is more, the builder never signed any electricity supply agreements. Koltsovo Airport and Rusgrad’s management have been ordered

‘We have been gradually switching our workers to a shorter working day and sending them on forced leaves since November 2008. During the current financial crisis, our shipments output went down by 50% to 60%, that is, from 450 million RUR to 150 million RUR worth of produce,’ Uralmash Machine-Building Corporation’s General Director Nazim Efendiev said in the course of a round table discussion on the crisis-defying measures in the industrial sector. ‘Last fall, even the contracts we got prepaid on had to be halted because of the crisis. Moreover, some of our customers are even unable to pay

‘UC RUSAL owes our company scores of millions of rubles for the goods we delivered to them as early as six months ago. This February, RUSAL has sent us a letter asking for a thirty-percent discount on the machinery we have already shipped (and which they are using already). If we agree, Uralpromoborudovaniye will be placed on UC RUSAL’s top priority creditors list; if we don’t, we’ll only be on the sixth-order list. Yet even if we go for the first option, it’s still unclear just when exactly we’ll get paid, since the payment date hasn’t been set. RUSAL claims the debt will be paid off all in