Boris Dyakonov is no longer going to serve as Bank24.ru’s Chairman; he is to be succeeded by Yaroslav Alexeev of Life Group. The news has been disseminated via the bank’s official website. Still, Boris Dyakonov is going to remain the BOD member, even though he is now not on the bank’s Supervisory Board.

‘The bad debt problem is the most common one for a bank during an economic meltdown. It’s true that the amount of overdue debt on loan payments only tends to increase lately, and I think this is only the beginning,’ Home Credit & Finance Bank CEO Ivan Svitek announced at the press conference on the introduction of the bank’s Yekaterinburg branch. ‘We keep working on the cushion mechanics, so to say; for one, we’ve grown pickier in terms of whom to give money to. The borrowers who find themselves unable to pay the loan off are offered debt restructuring (if we can be positive that they

‘The international hauls are not very popular at the moment. The number of flights operated to the hot countries like Egypt and Thailand and to Europe kept going down in January and February 2009. Thus, the number of flights bound for Hurghada, Sharm El Sheikh, Bangkok, Dubai, Prague, Frankfurt, Vienna, and Budapest dropped by 7.6%, 19.3%, 30.1%, 33.8%, 17%, 19.4%, 32.1%, and 7.1%, respectively,’ Yekaterinburg-based Koltsovo Airport’s press officer said to an UrBC reporter. The only exception to this rule is destinations to Tianjin, China and Goa, India: the number of flights operated to

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court keeps looking into the claim laid by A.K. Serov Metallurgical Plant against Severskiy Pipe Works regarding the recovery of 266,871,317.54 RUR. The preliminary court session took place on December 26, 2008. The plaintiff placed the claim with the regional Arbitration Court in order to make the defendant pay the above-mentioned sum. The figures are made up of 263,785,358.48 RUR worth of the price the defendant allegedly failed to pay for the goods delivered in accordance with the agreement 734/2331 as of November 19, 2007 and 3,085,959.06 RUR worth of

‘A number of luxury brands are expected to leave the local market in the near future. In most cases, this has to do with the companies failing to invest cleverly or to assess the brand’s potential adequately prior to the market launch. Besides, there’s the problem of receivables and the loan pressure. To make matters worse, not a single Russian group is interested in buying a luxury project and developing it at the moment, since the local luxury market cannot appeal to the major players right now,’ says Anna Kochneva of Vindex Group (the representative of Givenchy, Gianfranco Ferre,

‘The article called AVS Group Builds on Wings that one of the newspapers carried recently is not quite accurate. It’s not true that AVS Group now owns a 53% shareholding in Ural Civil Aviation Plant, in spite of what the Group’s press officer was reported as saying. We have no idea of how the Group could possibly acquire the shareholding. The plant’s management was shown some papers which absolutely do not prove that the Group has any property rights over the shareholding whatsoever,’ says the plant’s Commercial Director’s Assistant Alexander Plotnikov. In the meantime, AVS Group’s PR

Sverdlovsk Region’s division of Rosprirodnadzor (the state environmental watchdog) performed a series of unscheduled inspections of local enterprises. As a result, plenty of environmental offenses were detected. For one, Baronskoye Mining failed to eliminate one of the three subsoil use regulation violations and therefore had a 3,000-ruble mine imposed on it, the spokesperson for Ural Federal District’s division of Rosprirodnadzor says. UAZ-SUAL turned out to have violated two regulations and was ordered to improve on the situation. The inspection of Uraltransmash (carried out upon the

Rus-Rating raised URSA Bank’s credit rating from BB+, Indefinite Rating Outlook, to BBB-, Stable Rating Outlook. The agency reports the Russian banks switched to the more conservative lending policies as early as the middle of 2008, as the western markets kept struggling with the economic downfall and it was quite obvious that the global problems were bound to affect the domestic market. ‘Most Russian banks (including URSA Bank) are trying to make their resource base less dependent upon the foreign loans and introducing greater interest rates on the home loan markets as well as growing

The management of Bank Severnaya Kazna’s Magnitogorsk branch (the asset of Alfa-Bank at the moment) has recently made 78 people redundant, Chelyabinsk Region Labor and Employment division reported to UrBC. In the meantime, the local office was closed for repairs on February 17, 2009.

Khanty-Mansiyskiy Bank is not planning on acquiring Yekaterinburg Municipal Bank, the company’s Deputy PR Director Vitaliy Saprykin was reported as saying. However, Khanty-Mansiyskiy Bank has earlier been rumored to consider buying an impressive shareholding in Yekaterinburg Municipal Bank. The two banks agreed in October 2008 that they would cooperate in the field of lending to entities and individuals through 2012. Their collaborative agenda included joint loans to private and business customers based in Yekaterinburg and Sverdlovsk Region as well as other parts of Russia; besides, they

Severstal denies the claims made by Uralmash Machine-Building Corporation’s GD Nazim Efendiev regarding the money the former allegedly owes to Uralmash Engineering. Efendiev actually stated at a trade union meeting that Severstal had failed to pay the company for the goods already delivered to them. ‘We cannot see why Severstal should be put on the list of companies unable to pay for the produce shipped to them. This is how things stand: the company bought a 500-ton crane from Uralmash Engineering and hasn’t paid 10 million RUR to it by now. This sum is nothing but a delayed payment (provided

Sverdlovsk Region’s division of Rosprirodnadzor (the state environmental watchdog) performed a series of unscheduled inspections of local enterprises. As a result, plenty of environmental offenses were detected. For one, Baronskoye Mining failed to eliminate one of the three subsoil use regulation violations and therefore had a 3,000-ruble mine imposed on it, the spokesperson for Ural Federal District’s division of Rosprirodnadzor says. UAZ-SUAL turned out to have violated two regulations and was ordered to improve on the situation. The inspection of Uraltransmash (carried out upon the

Rus-Rating raised URSA Bank’s credit rating from BB+, Indefinite Rating Outlook, to BBB-, Stable Rating Outlook. The agency reports the Russian banks switched to the more conservative lending policies as early as the middle of 2008, as the western markets kept struggling with the economic downfall and it was quite obvious that the global problems were bound to affect the domestic market. ‘Most Russian banks (including URSA Bank) are trying to make their resource base less dependent upon the foreign loans and introducing greater interest rates on the home loan markets as well as growing

The management of Bank Severnaya Kazna’s Magnitogorsk branch (the asset of Alfa-Bank at the moment) has recently made 78 people redundant, Chelyabinsk Region Labor and Employment division reported to UrBC. In the meantime, the local office was closed for repairs on February 17, 2009.

Khanty-Mansiyskiy Bank is not planning on acquiring Yekaterinburg Municipal Bank, the company’s Deputy PR Director Vitaliy Saprykin was reported as saying. However, Khanty-Mansiyskiy Bank has earlier been rumored to consider buying an impressive shareholding in Yekaterinburg Municipal Bank. The two banks agreed in October 2008 that they would cooperate in the field of lending to entities and individuals through 2012. Their collaborative agenda included joint loans to private and business customers based in Yekaterinburg and Sverdlovsk Region as well as other parts of Russia; besides, they

Severstal denies the claims made by Uralmash Machine-Building Corporation’s GD Nazim Efendiev regarding the money the former allegedly owes to Uralmash Engineering. Efendiev actually stated at a trade union meeting that Severstal had failed to pay the company for the goods already delivered to them. ‘We cannot see why Severstal should be put on the list of companies unable to pay for the produce shipped to them. This is how things stand: the company bought a 500-ton crane from Uralmash Engineering and hasn’t paid 10 million RUR to it by now. This sum is nothing but a delayed payment (provided

UralBusinessConsulting Agency of Information and Analytics provides branding services as well as all-inclusive marketing, informational and PR counseling of a company. The Agency offers creation, organization and implementation of special events in the Ural Federal District, including presentations and opening ceremonies, exhibitions, festivals, and any theme contests alongside with media-attractive business events such as seminars and debates. The agency is ever ready to provide its clients with a full set of promotional services, namely, advertising campaign budget schemes, placing the

UralBusinessConsulting Agency of Information and Analytics is the only regional information agency whose activities are devoted exclusively to production and distribution of economic information and business news. The agency maintains its presence on the regional economic information market since 2000. - Information services of UralBusinessConsulting agency define regional service delivery standards for business news production. - Years of successful operation testify credibility and open-mindedness of the news materials produced by UralBusinessConsulting. - In 2005, the Southern-Ural

‘The Federal Migration Service’s Sverdlovsk Region division’s data on the number of foreign workers entering the region are incomplete, since the only information they get comes from Koltsovo Airport of Yekaterinburg. According to the data I have, the number of foreign workers coming t o the region has halved since the beginning of the year. Most of the workers, who went home upon the end of the season, are now waiting for things to get more certain: it’s a well-known fact that the future of the region’s numerous construction projects is dubious at the moment,’ the leader of Yekaterinburg’s

‘We understand that there might be little demand for our clothes at the time of a crisis. Yet our Yekaterinburg boutique has always been seen as a long-term investment, so we were prepared for this. Besides, we are positive that things will get back to normal and we will be a success. We expect to keep the excitement about the brand up by all sorts of shows and presentations,’ Pierre De Maigret, General Manager at Christian Dior Russia, announced at the opening of their Christian Dior boutique in Yekaterinburg. In the meantime, the ongoing crisis has already forced some luxury brands to leave