‘The current economic crisis in Russia opens way to raider attacks and hostile takeovers. Economic troubles (mainly companies’ debts) make businesses more vulnerable and less capable of countering such strikes. Living within the crisis information field lets offenders hide their attacks under the overall deluge of negative data; alternatively, takeover attempts can be easily disguised as ‘financial aid’. All this poses additional threats for a business’s economic security,’ Europe-Asia Information and Consulting Center’s General Director Oleg Borisov said to an UrBC reporter. ‘We haven’t got

Ural Airlines is to start operating its new Saint Petersburg-Kulyab flights on February 18, 2009. The flights are to be operated once a week, that is, every Wednesday. The airplane takes off in Saint Petersburg at 12.15 PM and arrives in Kulyab at 7.10 PM. The cheapest tickets are available for ?235 (plus the fuel fee). Then, the plane leaves Kulyab at 8.40 PM and arrives in Saint Petersburg at 12.05 AM on Thursday. The cheapest tickets are available for ?230 (plus the fuel fee). The departure and arrival time is local, the company’s press officer reports. Once the carrier acquired more A 320

‘Sverdlovsk Region’s companies owed their gas suppliers 4.862 billion RUR at the beginning of February, while the sum owed by TGK-9 (our greatest debtor) really did exceed 1.5 billion RUR. Nevertheless, this company had only paid 116 million RUR off by February 9, 2009,’ Itera O&G Company’s PR Director Viktor Cheremukhin said to an UrBC reporter. ‘In case TGK-9 fails to pay off the remainder of its natural gas debt, Uralsevergaz will have to gradually introduce gas supply limits starting February 15, 2009. We understand that this is going to badly affect Sverdlovsk Region’s economy, but

‘Our tenants have already got the opportunity to have their offices and shops in KomsoMall Trade & Entertainment Center remodeled and furnished. Nevertheless, the final commissioning of the mall has been postponed until April 2009. I believe that this is a common thing in the building industry,’ says DVI Group’s Press Service Director Oleg Lopatin. The mall was originally expected to have been commissioned in February 2009; the center’s total area comes to about 67,200 square meters.

‘Getting the money owed to them back in time is becoming a matter of survival for many businesses at the moment. However, the currently existing legal instruments cannot provide the legitimate, fast, and efficient ways of getting these sums back. An arbitration court might keep looking into the accounts receivable-related cases for years, and bankruptcy proceedings also take a long time to complete. In fact, this time is long enough for a debtor to close down or remove all of its liquid assets elsewhere. As a result, getting one’s money paid back turns out to be extremely difficult,’ says

The Russian Federation Ministry of Regional Development claims in court that Alfa-Bank and Transstroy Engineering Corporation should pay $19m and $9m, respectively, for delay with the commissioning of the dam that protects Saint Petersburg from floods, Kommersant reports. According to the newspaper, Transstroy Engineering Corporation (a member of Oleg Deripaska’s Transstroy) and Rosstroy signed a 4.7-billion-ruble agreement regarding the construction of the dam’s second portion in October 2005. After Rosstroy went into liquidation in May 2008, the Russian Federation Ministry of Regional

Bank Severnaya Kazna (Alfa-Bank’s asset at the moment) is going to close down two more of its additional offices in Sverdlovsk Region. One of the outlets is located at 12a Belorechenskaya St. in Yekaterinburg, another one at 45a Pobeda St. in Nizhniy Tagil. Both offices will last welcome their customers on February 17, 2009. After this, the bank’s private customers based in Nizhniy Tagil can be serviced in the office located at 13 Vagonostroiteli St., while businesses can keep using the bank’s outlet at 45a Pobeda St. in Nizhniy Tagil through April 29, 2009.

According to Interfax-CEA’s rating, METCOMBANK proved the Urals’ No.1 bank with the fastest-growing assets: these rose by 40.1% over the year 2008. The ranking was based on the data available as of December 31, 2008 and involved 987 banks altogether, including 56 banks based in Ural Federal District, METCOMBANK’s press officer reports. The bank’s assets amounted to 19,091,300,000 RUR on December 31, 2008, thus securing METCOMBANK a ranking promotion from the 132nd position to the 118th one from the top. ‘Despite the current financial crisis, we managed to make all of our development plans

Interfax-CEA (Center for Economic Analysis) did a research on the Russian banking sector’s activity last year, looking into the banks’ basic performance indicators as well as the volume and structure of their assets and liabilities. As a matter of fact, three Sverdlovsk Region-based banks were featured in the rating of Russia’s Top 100 banks with the largest asset volume. The Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development (UBRD) scored the highest position of the three, with its asset volume reaching 50,206,030,000 RUR by the end of 2008 (which was 32.02% better than at the beginning of the

Bank Severnaya Kazna (Alfa-Bank’s asset at the moment) announced it was going to launch a re-branding campaign that will leave one of their Yekaterinburg offices (located at 2 Kuznetsov St.) completely remodeled. The office will close down for refurbishing on February 13, 2009. Alfa-Bank expects to open its own additional office on these premises on March 16, 2009.

This February and March, Chelyabinsk Tube-Rolling Plant (ChTPZ, part of ChTPZ Group) is going to complete an order for a number of large-diameter pipes placed by Gazprom; the pipes are needed to repair and maintain some major pipelines (Valdai-Pskov-Riga, Kipen-Gatchina, Gryazovets-Leningrad I, and Torzhok-Minsk-Ivatsevitchi-2 ones). The 530-, 720-, 1,020-, and 1,220-millimeter pipes with 7 to 16.7 millimeter wall width and a three-layer anti-corrosion polyethylene coating are made of 17G1S-U 13G1S-U steel in accordance with TU 14-3-1270-2001 and TU 14-158-153-2005 standards. These LDPs are

Interfax-CEA (Center for Economic Analysis) came up with its Interfax 100 ranking featuring six Ural banks with the largest asset volume. Three of those are based in Tyumen Region, another three are located in Sverdlovsk Region. SKB-Bank was rated as Russia’s 73d largest bank in terms of asset volume in 2008, with the assets growing by 32.9% compared with 2007; besides, the bank was promoted by four positions in last year’s rating compared with 2007. As for the beginning of 2009, all of the bank’s development indicators keep rising dynamically. For one, SKB-Bank’s capital increased by 42% in

Hot-rolling Mill 2500 was re-launched at Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works’ (MMK) sheet rolling plant a short while ago. A little earlier, the company had to stop using the mill for the time being because of the dropping hot roll products’ output. The enterprise only relied on the adjustage for some time, that is, two crosscutting units were used for sheet production. What MMK was mainly interested in was keeping the staff employed, so over two hundred workers were directed to Mill 500 construction site, and some of the employees underwent internship at the hot-rolling Mill 2000 shop. The

According to the Central Bank of Russia, volume of loans given by Perviy Respublikanskiy Bank to non-state for-profit organizations despite overdraft dropped by 34.27% (from 40.702 million RUR to 26.751 million RUR) by January 1, 2009.

Koltsovo Airport of Yekaterinburg looked into its achievements in January 2009. As it happens, the company has serviced 15.9% fewer passengers this January compared to January 2008, that is, 134,035 people altogether, of whom 42,314 people traveled internationally, 80,353 passengers used various domestic flights, and 11,368 people bought tickets for flights operated within the CIS. This was, respectively, 7.2%, 19.4%, and 16.3% less than a year earlier. In addition to rendering its services to passengers, the airport handled 665.86 tons of cargo and mail in January 2009 (which was 24.4% less

‘We cannot meet our deadlines with The Industrial Urals-The Polar Urals (a project on the industrial development of the Urals’ north) because some of the tasks laid out in the general plan have been skipped and some of them have been put off until later. We’ll only be able to use 80% of the federal budget subsidies, even though we did use of all the financing provided by the local budgets. This slowing down has to do with the fact that getting the licenses, drawing up the design documents, etc. was only completed way after the deadline,’ Alexei Melgunov (one of the department heads at A. P.

‘About 14,000 people are going to get released from Sverdlovsk Region’s prisons this year; most of these people got some rather long prison terms back in the mid-nineties. Setting free the people who had been sentenced for felonies and capital offenses en masse is bound to put the population’s safety in jeopardy. There are two kinds of convicts imprisoned in the nineties, actually, and each of the two kinds stands for specific kinds of risks,’ says Europe-Asia Information and Consulting Center’s GD Oleg Borisov ‘The first category comprises the members of organized crime groups. Some people

The Central Bank of Russia reports volume of loans given by Koltso Urala Commercial Bank to non-state for-profit organizations for 31 days to 90 days plummeted by 100% (from 13.332 million RUR to zero) by January 1, 2009.

The company’s third oxygen converter was launched at Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works’ (MMK) LD plant recently. The machine was subjected to serious repairs at the end of October 2008, with MMK’s daughter enterprises dealing in electrical and mechanical repairs acting as the general contractors for the project. The mechanical improvements actually included replacing the converter’s carrying ring and its frame. By the end of January 2009, the overhaul had already been completed. As a matter of fact, the company’s second converter underwent similar upgrading last summer; this time, however,

‘Mr. Gavriolvskiy simply deceived the Governor and all those also present at the moment. He said that we had been procrastinating the solution for two years, but, as it turned out at today’s meeting, this isn’t true. We only received his application in October 2008,’ the Minister for State Property Management Alexei Molotkov announced at a press conference in Yekaterinburg. The Minister actually referred to the report Andrei Gavrilovskiy (who is currently putting up the third section of Antey Business Center in Yekaterinburg) made at a recent meeting chaired by the Governor of Sverdlovsk