URSA Bank made 346.12 million RUR worth of payments on the second coupon of its eighth bond issue (file number 40800323В) on April 16, 2009. The coupon interest rate was determined at 11.19% a year, with 55.8 RUR paid per each bond. The bank reports they went through with their eighth bond issue worth 6.203 billion RUR at MICEX on April 17, 2008. The bonds are to be in circulation for seven years.

About 20% of Russia’s largest banks experienced a decrease in their capital stock in 2008, Kommersant referred to the National Rating Agency as reporting. The agency says Bank VTB, Alfa-Bank, and Perviy Cheshsko-Rossiyskiy Bank have gone through the greatest drops, that is, by 28%, 28.5%, and 21.1%, respectively. For some of the banks, the trouble has to do with losses. Severo-Vostochniy Alliance Joint-Stock Commercial Bank, for instance, lost 2.041 billion RUR in the course of securities portfolio reassessment, so its basic stock went down by 36.8% last year. The same is true of Rossiyskiy

Uralmash Machine-Building Corporation is planning to make some of its workers redundant in the near future. 210, 149, and 800 people will have to leave in May, June, and July 2009, respectively, the corporation’s Personnel Director Natalya Babilurova announced at the regional enterprise support committee’s meeting.

Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Eduard Rossel spoke with Public Works and Housing Minister of Turkey Faruk Nafız Özak about the possibility of setting up Turkey’s diplomatic representation in Yekaterinburg. The proposal was made in the course of the Governor’s meeting with a delegation of Turkish officials headed by the Minister. Among the delegates were the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Turkey to Russia Halil Akyndzhi, Turkey’s leading bank representatives, and top executives of large construction enterprises. ‘We cooperate in many important fields; we have a

The share of Alfa-Bank’s corporate overdue debt reached 9.83% on April 1, 2009 compared with only 1.14% on October 1, 2008 and 6.04% on January 1, 2009, Banki.ru refers to Alfa-Bank’s Deputy Chairman Vladimir Tatarchuk as saying. According to Tatarchuk, the entire portfolio’s debt share amounts to 10%, while the bad debt makes up 20% of the total lending portfolio volume. ‘Unless some emergency occurs, we’ll manage to keep our overdue and bad debt shares the same by the end of the year,’ says the executive as quoted by Banki.ru.

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin asked his Deputy for Social Issues Evgeniy Redin to write up a project on paying incidental 500-ruble allowances on Victory Day to the Great Patriotic War veterans, the Leningrad blockade survivors, and death camp prisoners who were under age at the time, 95,000 people altogether. This is a limited list for this difficult year: before the crisis, the allowances used to be paid to all of the region’s retirees. What is more, the Governor asked the Minister for Construction, Infrastructure, and Roads Valeriy Shopov to arrange the new public transport

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin had a meeting with the regional trade union committee in order to look into the crisis-defying measures taken by both the federal and regional authorities. According to the spokesperson for the Governor, Petr Sumin spoke about the importance of trade unions in overcoming the global financial crisis. ‘The most important thing at the moment is to protect the people, that is, workers, from the social hardships, and to preserve the unique human potential. The trade unions are now the only well-structured and efficient social force within this country’s

‘We’ve offered our Andrei Kozlov scholarship to Yekaterinburg students for the second time this year. I see this as a trend, actually, and I am positive that the scholarship will be available to the worthiest finalists next year as well, in spite of the current crisis. We have been doing this (and intend to go on) because the arriving generation of managers and finance experts will be useful to both URSA Bank and the entire country,’ URSA Bank’s acting President Vadim Manin announced during the final selection procedure at Ural State Technical University in Yekaterinburg. The winners entitled

379 counterfeited warrants of execution regarding the money some debtors allegedly have to pay Home Credit & Finance Bank have been found in the offices of Sverdlovsk Region’s Court Officers Service recently, the spokesperson for the Service reports. All of these papers have allegedly been issued by a Tomsk-based court’s Justice of the Peace, but it was detected in the course of an investigation that the court never produced any of the documents at all. It was also revealed that the claims were placed with the court officers on behalf of Ilya Moskvichev, a Chelyabinsk-based employee of a

Bank Monetniy Dom’s BOD decided to hold the annual general meeting on May 28, 2009. The stockholders are to approve of the annual report and the year’s statement of affairs as well as the profit and loss statement for 2008; in addition, they are to settle the issues of profit distribution and the payment of dividends. One more point on the meeting’s agenda has to do with the quantity of BOD members and electing these members, the review board, and the auditor.

The Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development was given a confirmation of ?7m worth of credit lines in the course of negotiating with VTB Bank Deutschland AG Frankfurt/Main, Germany. The bank’s representatives explain this is the greatest limit meant for handling foreign LCs ever offered to any Ural bank by a partner bank. VTB Bank Deutschland has also expressed an interest in financing the UBRD’s trade transactions. ‘Thanks to the parties’ agreement, the regional enterprises will reach the new heights in terms of foreign trade; our customers will be entitled to cheaper loan resources due

Alfa-Bank has given the money back to the victims of a recent Alfa-Click system swindle, Vedomosti quoted the bank’s customers as saying. According to the newspaper, a number of fraudsters managed to illegally gain access to the bank customers’ cell phone numbers at the end of March 2009. Now these numbers are used by Alfa-Bank to send disposable passwords needed for Internet-Bank transactions, so the offenders used these one-time passwords to transfer a certain sum of money into a certain customer’s account. Vedomosti says one victim still hasn’t been paid, so the dissatisfied customer is

Kontur-Extern (the system developed by Yekaterinburg-based SKB-Kontur) won the third prize in the Brand Of The Year/EFFIE 2008 contest in the High-Tech Goods & Services category. The first and the second prizes were awarded to Rostelecom and Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd’s Samsung X360 laptops. The Brand Of The Year/EFFIE annual contest has been held since 1998, awarding prizes to the most successful brand-building projects on the domestic market. The Russian national Brand Of The Year award joined EFFIE, the international prize awarded to marketing experts in thirty-thee different

‘Under the current crisis, a company’s intangible assets and reputation are highly prone to ‘erosion’: the trust level drops really low on the financial mediation market. Both individuals and businesses choose to handle the cash immediately,’ says General Director of Blagodat Securities Investment Company Vsevolod Chaschin. ‘The crisis makes people cut down on their goodwill expenses. A company’s management has to look at each of its assets and decide if it’s functional or not. In case of machinery, the outgoings obviously cannot be reduced or halted, whereas the intangible assets are quite

Pipe Metallurgical Company (TMK) shipped 581,000 tons of steel pipes to its consumers in the first quarter of 2009. This is 17.8% less than a year earlier. ‘The decrease in shipments primarily has to do with the market’s shrinking demand; this is particularly true of the industrial pipe market. For one, the domestic market’s volume has decreased by 33% recently,’ the spokesperson for the company explains.

An equipment breakdown leading to the complete destruction of the boiler occurred at Nizhniy Tagil-based Uralhimplast’s ion exchanger department at 11.10 AM on April 15, 2009, Sverdlovsk Region’s division of the Department of Emergencies reports. Both the fire and the possible discharge of harmful substances were avoided, but four people got injured in the accident. All of them have been taken to hospital and are believed to have got some fractures. ‘An ad hoc committee is looking into the reasons of the explosion at the scene of the accident at the moment. The cause of the accident has not

‘Machine-building is the only branch of industry involved in the high-value-added production, and it is this branch that has the greatest labor productivity growth reserves. Even so, we still haven’t managed to raise the branch’s share in Sverdlovsk Region’s industrial structure. At the moment, it only comes to 20%,’ the region’s Minister for Industry and Science Anatoly Gredin announced at the region’s major enterprises’ chief designers meeting. ‘Then, we cannot boast any efficient machine-building sector structure. There are 220 industrial SMEs and 140 small businesses in Sverdlovsk Region

‘There are plenty of companies trying to spend less on their goodwill assets at the time of a crisis. I believe, however, that one shouldn’t try to save a little money on one’s reputation despite the hard times,’ Eurogreen Investment and Finance Company’s GD Evgeniy Kostarev said to an UrBC reporter. ‘It might be hard to find the same sums provided for the reputation expenses in the past; nevertheless, spending on image advertising is always worth its while, otherwise the company might simply find itself completely forgotten by the market,’ he warned.

‘Yekaterinburg is to face the educational workers’ salary reform over the next three years. This might lead to some unproductive consequences when budget deficit keeps increasing,’ Head of Municipal Education Administration Evgeniya Umnikova announced at Yekaterinburg Municipal Duma’s third meeting. ‘Sverdlovsk Region Government’s decree makes it obligatory to have no fewer than twenty-five students in every classroom and to make sure the minimum wage comes to at least 4,300 RUR; in addition, the teacher/non-teaching staff salary ratio has to come to 70/30 now, and there has to be set up a

Sverdlovsk Region’s public prosecution authorities detected over 2,000 budgetary legislation violations in 2008; this was announced at the authorities’ budgetary compliance committee meeting. As a result, 128 and 635 people have had to face administrative and disciplinary liability, respectively, on the basis of 370 orders issued by the public prosecutors. In addition, a dozen criminal lawsuits have been instituted. What is more, the prosecutors placed 160 protests against illegitimate enactments with the authorities and issued 135 warnings; then, 579 claims were placed with the courts.