‘Our Dodge, Jeep, and Chrysler sales have dropped by about 70% in the first quarter of 2009 compared with a year earlier. This can be explained by the ongoing financial crisis, first of all, so the customers’ paying capacity has decreased, and then, there are certain problems in the way the manufacturers promote their cars on the market,’ says Asmoto car show’s Sales Manager Evgeniy Vasilyev. ‘We’ve got about fifteen cars made in 2007 in store at the moment, and we are forced to sell them with a discount, that is, at a sacrifice. However, the manufacturing companies are willing to make up for

URSA Bank’s balance sheet profit came to .3 billion RUR in the first quarter of 2009, while the company’s own funds were estimated at 26.6 billion RUR on April 1, 2009, which was .3% less than on January 1, 2009. The bank’s capital adequacy came to 16.8%, which is 1.6 times more than what is required by the Central Bank of Russia. In addition, URSA Bank’s net assets reached 207.8 billion RUR in January-March 2009, thus going down by 2.6% since the beginning of the year. Their liquid assets amounted to 40.6 billion RUR. The bank had managed to attract 57.9 billion RUR worth of customer

Thirteen of Metcombank’s customers have already used their right to pay off their mortgage with the help of the so-called maternity money – the 299,000 RUR the state pays a mother for her second child and/or consecutive children. These are five borrowers based in Krasnoturinsk, five people from Kamensk Uralskiy, and three Yekaterinburg dwellers, the spokesperson for the bank reports. In addition, Metcombank gives its customers a chance to have their loan payments restructured, whereas most other banks only ask for paying one’s debt off in advance. ‘We chose to help our customers, as we

‘It could be that the current stock market uprising is a false start, since this increase actually looks a little threatening. There are no economic grounds for the improvements at the moment, so the market is fed by rumors and gossip, like the one about the U.S. allegedly planning to buy the ‘infected’ assets. The Russian stock market has no fundamental support whatsoever, so there is no good reason for it to be growing now,’ Eurogreen Investment & Finance Company’s GD Evgeniy Kostarev said to an UrBC reporter. ‘I think the market will drop a little again,’ he added. In the meantime, the

Sberbank’s Ural branch came up with a new ‘overnight’ offer for its business customers recently. ‘The offer means a company can deposit its rubles, dollars, or euros at the bank for one to six days and get a guaranteed income at the rates comparable with those of the interbank market,’ the bank’s press officer explained to UrBC. ‘One general agreement can cover several deals valid for various periods and involving various sums. A customer has to deposit at least 50 million RUR, $1m, or ?1m, the upper limit is to be agreed upon with the bank’s representative. The interest rate is determined

Yekaterinburg’s existing home prices were stable on March 10 through April 7, 2009, with the average price reaching 57,860 RUR per square meter of housing on April 7, 2009, which was 1.75% less than four weeks earlier. In certain parts of the city, however, the prices dropped by 1.35% to 2.47%, with the weekly price fluctuations ranging between +.32% and -.67%,’ reports President of Ural Chamber of Real Estate Mikhail Davy. The Chamber’s forecast is that the housing market isn’t going to experience any significant changes in the nearest future, with the average housing prices only changing

Metallist has already announced that forty-nine people are to be made redundant; in fact, only 225 people had still been employed by March 31, 2009. The company says the personnel cuts have to do with restructuring and the hard times the business is going through. Metallist happens to depend directly on the orders placed by Severouralsk bauxite mine (SUBR), and there are no orders at all at the moment. SUBR, in its turn, is planning to have six people leave the enterprise, Severouralskiy Employment Center reports. ‘All the people who’ve lost their jobs naturally get registered with the

‘The selection of Andrei Kozlov scholarship finalists is an event aimed at enhancing our students’ career awareness. The more students learn about the options available to them, the better things will be for both the potential finalists and other students. This is a great motivation tool that benefits everyone,’ says Dean of B.N. Yeltsin Ural State Technical University’s Department of Economics and Management Vadim Krivorotov. Six students entitled to Andrei Kozlov Scholarship are to present their financial projects to the scholarship committee on April 15, 2009. The scholarship was

Four of Central Bank of Russia’s plenipotentiary representatives no longer monitor their respective private banks after they have completed their mission and the banks have paid off their collateral-free loans to the Bank of Russia in full. One of these banks is located in Sverdlovsk Region: METCOMBANK has paid off its loan in toto. The Central Bank’s representatives have also been called off from Voronezh-based Agroimpuls, Krasnodar-based Krayinvestbank, and Perm-based Uralskiy Finansoviy Dom.

The net loss of Bank Severnaya Kazna came to 1,240,248,000 RUR in the first quarter of 2009, whereas a quarter earlier, the figures reached 1,524,951,000 RUR.

Ural Federal District’s division of Rostechnadzor (the state environmental, technological, and nuclear safety watchdog) carried out 1,427 inspections of Vanadium/Kachkanar ore mining and processing enterprise last year. As a result, 6,655 safety violations were revealed, with fifty-five cases when stoppages were required, and 316 employees faced disciplinary liability, the spokesperson for Ural Federal District’s division of Rostechnadzor reports. In addition, heads of the enterprise’s departments were given 452 improvement proposals, all of which were implemented. Nevertheless, some of the

SKB-Bank went through with its first transaction proposed within the framework of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s international trade development program ‘The program is targeted at promoting our foreign trade in Central and Eastern Europe as well as in the CIS. The EBRD provides foreign banks with guarantees on behalf of the banks located in Central and Eastern Europe and the CIS. SKB-Bank is now one of the businesses to be offered these guarantees,’ the bank’s press officer said to an UrBC reporter. ‘It is with the help of SKB-Bank and the EBRD’s support that a new

Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) is now employing the latest European methods to train its future workers. According to the company’s PR Department, Magnitogorsk Polytechnic College lab is now fitted with educational stands and units identical to those seen in German academies where the future experts for German concerns are trained. This has been made possible due to the grant the college won in the federal education contest in 2007. The college representatives visited Festo Academy in Germany last year to practice using the new equipment and take part in the development seminar on

A production record was set at Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) coating shop: the polymeric coating unit produced 18,826 tons of goods instead of the planned 17,000 tons in March 2009. The company’s PR Department explains the unit, launched in the summer of 2004, showed its maximum capacity of the moment in October 2005 when 17,032 tons of goods were produced. Most of the goods produced in March are zinc-coated rolled metal goods with poly coating, of which 16,500 have been delivered on the domestic market and 1,500 tons sold within the CIS. The order portfolio for April comes to

‘There are currently a lot of ways for the state to support this or that investment project. At the same time, the federal authorities will naturally focus on the top priority projects that are important to the entire country’s well-being,’ Minister for Industry and Trade Viktor Khristenko announced at a press conference in Yekaterinburg. Yekaterinburg is now hosting a major multi-faceted area development project known as Academic, invested in by Renova StroyGroup. The projects gets financing from the company itself as well as from the federal, regional, and municipal budgets. The

‘Yekaterinburg’s future Academic district is currently under construction, so people are employed there almost on 24/7 basis. A group of Czech delegates visited the site recently, surprised at seeing the builders start their work as early as 7 AM,’ Deputy Chairman of Sverdlovsk Region Legislation Assembly’s Duma Nail Shaimardanov said to an UrBC reporter. The official reports about 1,000 people were employed at the site at the beginning of 2009, with the figure to rise to 3,000 in the nearest future. This means that Renova StroyGroup, the project investor is creating new jobs, needed so badly

‘Yekaterinburg’s basic financial document needs to be edited now the first quarter of the year is over. About 3.5 billion RUR was paid into the budget in January through March 2009 (which comes to 15% of what was planned for the whole year), and over 5 billion RUR was spent (which comes to 19% of the annual spending figure). The difference was covered for by the last year’s leftovers,’ Head of Yekaterinburg Finance and Budget Administration Andrei Koryukov said at Yekaterinburg Municipal Duma’s Budget Committee meeting. ‘The authorities carried out forty-four inspections last year, producing

‘We’ve had to halt the company’s expansion in the Russian regions because of the current financial crisis. We’ve already got five subsidiaries in Sverdlovsk, Tyumen, Chelyabinsk, and Perm Regions as well as Moscow. We did plan to acquire insurance companies throughout Russia, including those in the Volga Region, Central Federal District, and Saint Petersburg. However, now we think it would be better to stop expanding for the year 2009,’ says Severnaya Kazna Insurance Company’s GD Alexander Merenkov. In the meantime, one of the company’s institutors Vladimir Frolov sold his 52% shareholding to

‘Our top priority at the moment is the structural changes in the country’s economy. We simply cannot afford to keep the ways we’ve got now, as this would make our illnesses chronic. A lot of so-called ‘monocities’ or towns with an only plant that provides all the jobs there are more or less of a development throwback, a problem we’ve inherited from our past,’ Minister for Industry and Trade Viktor Khristenko said in the course of his visits to Yekaterinburg’s industrial enterprises. ‘Quite often, such towns’ major problems are of social nature rather than those of business restoration and

The welding wire produced by MMK-METIZ (part of MMK Group) has recently been certified for compliance with the existing technical standards. The certification procedure of Sv-08GNM welding wire with the diameter of 4 mm made in accordance with TU 1227-036- 00187240-2006 and TU 14-4-1877-2004 standards was carried out by the experts from Standart-Diagnostika, Magnitogorsk Certification Center. As a result, the enterprise was given the corresponding certificate. The wire is meant for pipe welding, with the product’s main consumers being Russian tube-rolling plants. The wire application is