Sverdlovsk Region’s division of Federal Antimonopoly Service found Uralsib’s Yekaterinburg branch guilty of an administrative violation and imposed a 40,000-ruble fine on the offender, the spokesperson for the Service’s regional division reports. Sverdlovsk Region’s division of Federal Antimonopoly Service placed its claim against Uralsib with the court on August 1, 2008 after the Service’s committee detected that Uralsib had been using unsuitable advertisements throughout Sverdlovsk Region’s cities and towns. The advert in question had to do with the bank’s Mortgage offer and apparently

UralBusinessConsulting Agency of Information and Analytics has recently found out that Bank24.ru’s additional office located at 29 Malyshev St. might soon close down. In the meantime, the bank’s Chairman Sergey Lapshin has earlier announced via Bank24.ru’s official website that the bank seems to run too many additional offices, which is why they might cut down on their number.

URSA Bank came up with a performance report for 2008 (based on the Russian Accounting Standards). The bank’s balance sheet profit came to 3.7 billion RUR on January 1, 2009, which was 1.1 times better than a year earlier. URSA Bank’s net assets amounted to 213.4 billion RUR on the first day of this year, which exceeded the figures for January 1, 2008 by over 1.2 times. The volume of customers’ investments rose by 1.2 times and reached 62.2 billion RUR last year, largely due to the growing business customers’ fixed term deposits. The private customers’ deposit volume amounted to 36.8 billion

‘It’s impossible to improve on production without solving all the internal problems Uralmash Machine-Building Corporation is struggling with. We’ve got problems with discipline, negligence, theft, and lots of inefficient departments,’ Uralmash Machine-Building Corporation’s General Director Nazim Efendiev said at his meeting with the enterprise’s trade union representatives. ‘When it came to upgrading our machining departments, it became obvious that our experts are not very well informed about the equipment available on the market at the moment; nor do they know how to do the upgrading right

‘One of the serious threats faced by Russia’s economy at the moment is the business growing less legitimate on the one hand and money-laundering on the other. In this country, the lending crisis might become one of the stimulants for illegal practices’ trickling into business structures,’ Europe-Asia Information and Consulting Center’s GD Oleg Borisov said to an UrBC reporter. Meanwhile, experts get increasingly alarmed by the fact that most companies’ systemic risks keep rising. Apart from economic problems, businesses are also struggling with economic security-related issues. ‘Our

Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Eduard Rossel met up with Novolipetsk Iron & Steel Works (NLMK) BOD Chairman Vladimir Lisin and Maxi Group’s General Director Valeriy Shevelev to discuss their businesses’ performance. A little over a year ago, NLMK group (headed by Vladimir Lisin) acquired Maxi Group’s controlling shareholding. As it happens, Maxi Group actually comprises a number of Sverdlovsk Region-based metallurgical plants; in addition, NLMK owns the local VIZ Stal. Vladimir Lisin informed the Governor that all of the holding’s enterprises kept on operating. He explained that about 60%

‘Two medical insurance companies are leaving Chelyabinsk Region’s market at the moment. These are Ural-AIL-Med and Medincom that used to insure slightly over 70,000 locally employed people,’ Chelyabinsk Region Obligatory Medical Insurance Fund explained to an UrBC reporter. ‘Some companies are leaving the regional insurance market and some new ones are coming to replace them, and this is all perfectly normal. Insurers are private enterprises that can set up or close down a business in this or that part of Russia. The thing is, the employers whose workers have been insured with a leaving

Standard & Poor's, the international rating agency, affirmed MDM Bank’s corporate governance rating at 6+ and promoted its rating on the Russian scale up to 6,9, Independent Information Agency reports. MDM Bank’s ratings have thus been signed off the GovernanceWatch list, with Developing Rating Outlook. As a matter of fact, the bank’s ratings had to be reconsidered on December 4, 2008 because of its merging with URSA Bank. In the meantime, URSA Bank’s ratings were also promoted in December 2008. Fitch affirmed the bank’s short-term Issuer Default Rating at B+ and put it on Rating

‘We’ve lived through several difficult months, but the coming winter and spring ones are going to be even harder. I believe the first signs of the market recovery can only be expected next fall,’ Uralmash Machine-Building Corporation’s General Director Nazim Efendiev said in his interview to Za Tyazheloye Mashinostroyeniye ‘It is quite probable that we might not get any new contracts in 2009, so we’ll just keep finishing up with the old ones; also, we might be offered some smaller orders that will take three to six months to fulfill,’ he added.

‘Uralmash Machine-Building Corporation reports 79 people are to be made redundant throughout January and February 2009,’ says Yekaterinburg Employment Center’s deputy director Anatoly Kudryashov. ‘All in all, we’ve heard from seventy enterprises that are going to switch their workers to part-time mode, including Verkh-Isetskiy Metallurgical Plant and Stroytechservice,’ he added. ‘Uralmashzavod announced 2,317 people would be working part time soon, with another 309 people going on unpaid leaves,’ Anatoly Kudryashov noted. UralBusinessConsulting Agency of Information and Analytics found out

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of loans given by Tagilbank to non-state for-profit organizations for 181 days to 1 year went down by 26.44% (from 184.217 million RUR to 135.504 million RUR) on January 1, 2009 compared with a year earlier.

According to the Central Bank of Russia, volume of loans given by UralTransBank to sole traders for up to 30 days dropped by 42.62% (from 6.527 million RUR to 3.745 million RUR) on January 1, 2009 compared with a year earlier.

The Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development is now offering a wider range of deposit types to its business customers. ‘Placing one’s available funds on a deposit with a nice-looking interest is even more beneficial now, as we have recently raised the interest rates on our Kopilka deposit type (the annual interest rate can reach up to 13.7% here) and on our Great Income deposit where the maximum of 14.4% a year is paid at the end of the deposit period; alternatively, one can get one’s interest in rubles on a monthly basis, in which case the interest rate will amount to up to 14.7% a year.

Rus-Bank-Ural started dealing in foreign currency (USD) loans on January 26, 2009. ‘The new offer applies to automobile loans as well as consumer ones. The terms of these foreign currency loans (the sum, the interest, the requirements a borrower has to meet, and so on) are the same as those we hold for the classic ruble ones. The dollar is used to determine the amount of money borrowed from the bank, the interest rate, and the commission,’ the spokesperson for the bank explains. ‘We hope the new program is going to be popular with customers willing to buy a new car on credit (as a lot of

Sverdlovsk Gubernskiy Bank switched to a new version of Internet Bank system on January 31, 2009-February 1, 2009. ‘BS-Client v.3, the new version, is based on Message-Pro v.3, the newest cryptographic protection device available. This super protection will enable the bank to greatly enhance the safety and confidentiality of all its transactions,’ the bank’s IT experts report. ‘Safety and security are the key factors affecting a customer’s decision to use e-banking. I’m positive our clients are going to like our switching to Internet Bank’s new version,’ says the bank’s IT Management Director

Uralfinpromabank’s deposit volume dropped by 23.326 million RUR in December 2008, that is, from 2,219,681,000 RUR in November 2008 to 2,196,355,000 RUR last December. These data are available from Bank24.ru’s official website featuring a report on the performance of Sverdlovsk Region’s banks on January 1, 2009.

Ural Airlines recently got EASA 145.0415 and BDA/AMO/357 approval certificates. These certificates enable the airline to carry out transit-, daily-, weekly-check, and a-check maintenance procedures of Airbus A320 using its own station, without having to use the services of other companies. To get a permission to do this, a carrier needs EASA’s (European Aviation Safety Agency) approval as well as the approval of the Bermudas’ authorities that monitor the compliance of Airbus users with their maintenance regulations. Prior to Ural Airlines getting the papers, Aeroflot and Siberia Airlines were

Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Eduard Rossel chaired the meeting of the regional committee responsible for preparing things for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in the summer of 2009. The Governor said that a report on how well Sverdlovsk Region was prepared for the summit was to be presented at a meeting in the Kremlin on February 11, 2009. Last year, twenty summit-related projects were implemented successfully, with yet nine and seventeen summit-related events to take place this year on the federal and regional scale, respectively. All in all, 115 buildings were supposed to have

The account balance of VUZ-Bank’s customers went down by 66.94 million RUR in December 2008 (from 646.229 million RUR to 580.135 million RUR). These data are available from Bank24.ru’s official website featuring a report on the performance of Sverdlovsk Region’s banks on January 1, 2009.

URSA Bank’s subsidiary in Ufa became one of the winners in the state tender where banks competed for the right to deposit the available funds of some state unitary enterprises. The banks were selected by the Finance Ministry of the Republic of Bashkortostan among the organizations that managed to place their applications on December 3-17, 2008, the bank’s press officer reports. ‘This is the second time the subsidiary has won this contest. Establishing good partnerships with the state-run enterprises is one of the bank’s top priorities that helps us build up on the liabilities base as well as