‘Russia and Italy’s economic relations are totally strategic, which means they are rather long-term ones and based on a very sturdy foundation, including the energy projects. This stable economic cooperation is now moving into a new phase, from the trade to the investment format,’ Russian Minister for Industry and Trade Viktor Khristenko announced at a press conference in Yekaterinburg. The Minister believes both Russian and Italian partners contribute equally to a number of O&G and the energy sector project in the two countries. ‘One new area where the two parties cooperate is the

‘The Russian Minister for Industry and Trade Viktor Khristenko and I are currently working on the introduction of free economic zones in Russia, where emphasis would be laid on high technologies and telecommunications. A number of very important agreements to this extent were signed yesterday,’ the Italian Minister for Economic Development Claudio Scaiola announced at a press conference in Yekaterinburg. The Minister reported over eighty representatives of various Italian enterprises were currently touring four Russian cities, including Yekaterinburg, so they were to have over eight hundred

The volume of deposits opened at SKB-Bank by private individuals exceeded 16 billion RUR on April 8, 2009 (compared with 9.9 billion RUR a year earlier). ‘Our Patriot deposit type is definitely enjoying the greatest demand, with over 8.1 billion RUR placed with the bank under this particular deposit, despite the fact that it was only launched in December 2008. The beauty of this deposit type lies in the unique combination of increased income and a short deposit period. One can deposit the minimum of 10,000 RUR, for instance, and enjoy the 17.01% annual interest rate in only a hundred days!’

‘Our negotiations with Metro Cash & Carry’s management have been hard to pull through. They refused to produce a single document without getting their Moscow supervisors’ permission first during the public prosecution authorities’ checks, and the number of papers they did produce at the end of the day was very limited. The checks (made on April 2-3, 2009) made it clear that the company allowed for numerous labor code violations; for one, the employees’ wages haven’t been indexed once, while their working areas were way too cold,’ says Chairman of Sverdlovsk Region Trade Union Federation

URSA Bank won prizes in two categories at the Quality Festival run by Quality Guarantee Center and Yekaterinburg Consumer Rights Committee with its Magnificent Seven deposit offer as the Best Medium-Term Savings Program for Private Individuals and its Savings deposit as the Best Long-Term Savings Program for Private Individuals. The festival is an annual event, targeted at identifying and promoting the best organizations dealing in lending and depositing services to private customer. Besides, the contest is expected to enhance Yekaterinburg-based banks’ competitiveness. ‘URSA Bank has taken

UralBusinessConsulting was informed that Uralvagonzavod’s General Director Nikolai Malykh might soon resign. The whole thing began in March 2009 when President of Russian Railways Vladimir Yakunin criticized the company’s performance bitterly during his visit to Novosibirsk. ‘This enterprise needs to pay more attention to the quality of its produce. There was an accident involving a carriage made in 2007 at East Siberian Railroad only yesterday, which signals very poor quality control and horrid technologies. The plant’s management must learn to run the business properly first and only then

URSA Bank’s Kopilka (i.e. Money-Box) offer has recently become available throughout the entire country. ‘Any customer who gets their salary paid through our bank’s card can now put some money aside automatically – either a certain proportion of their month’s pay or a fixed sum of money each month,’ URSA Bank reports. Kopilka used to be only offered at the bank’s Siberian offices, so this is a welcome change. ‘To use the offer in the Ural offices, one needs to set up a term deposit at the bank and sign an additional agreement. In case a customer has got a deposit already, only an additional

Sverdlovsk Region Court of Arbitration keeps looking into the claim laid by Sberbank of Russia against CIT Capital regarding the 87.88-million-ruble debt and mortgaged property. Sberbank has claimed earlier that the defendant was not being very bona fide in terms of meeting its loan agreement obligations and paying off debt. The plaintiff feels that, since the company chose to go through the bankruptcy proceedings and to have its property alienated, CIT Capital currently has no means to pay its creditors back. This is why it seems essential that the security for the claim should be provided.

The spokesperson for Bank Severnaya Kazna reports none of the bank’s subsidiaries or offices will be operating on April 11 and 18, 2009. According to the official reports, this has to do with certain production necessities. The bank’s call center employees explain the company needs to solve some technical problems.

‘Metro Cash & Carry underwent an inspection by the public prosecution authorities on April 2-3, 2009. Quite a number of violations were detected in the process. Firstly, most of the store’s employees are working under harmful labor conditions, but the company does not bother to compensate them for this. Secondly, there aren’t nearly enough people employed, so the workers are forced to do two or three people’s amount of work. Besides, the labor agreement does not say what the worker’s position and working place is, which results in the employees being constantly rushed from one department

Six people entitled to Andrei Kozlov Scholarship are to present their financial projects to the scholarship committee on April 16, 2009. The scholarship was introduced by the Central Bank, the Association of Russian Banks, and URSA Bank in 2006 to support the students with excellent competence in economics and banking business. The scholarship winners are to receive a monthly allowance of 13,000 RUR. URSA Bank reports Ural State Technical University is one of the five colleges where the program is run, with the selection process conducted in March and April 2009. The university proposed

Ural Airlines was officially placed on the IOSA (operational safety audit) list on March 28, 2009. The carrier hosted six international auditors in April 2008 and was declared to have successfully passed the audit procedure on April 25, 2008. As a result, the company acquired the status of an IOSA standards-complying airline in March 2009. ‘This means that the company has proved its ability to provide safety in terms of flight operation, management system, documentation, aircraft maintenance, and much else besides,’ the spokesperson for Ural Airlines said to an UrBC reporter. An IOSA-listed

A meeting of the House of Representatives’ deputies, chaired by Lyudmila Babushkina, took place on Uralmashzavod’s premises. The meeting’s agenda was devoted to the dramatic increase in land fees and to measures aimed at fighting and preventing unemployment in Sverdlovsk Region, the region’s Legislative Assembly press officer reports. Prior to the meeting, the deputies visited the plant’s machine-assembly department and the steel-smelting shop. The tour was guided by Uralmash Machine-Building Corporation’s GD Nazim Efendiev. The executive said the outbreak of the financial crisis was keenly

‘To solve the problems our company is currently facing, a tripartite agreement needs to be signed by Egorshinksiy radio plant, Novicombank, and AvtoVAZ. This will bring more money to the plant,’ Egorshinksiy radio plant’s GD Vitaliy Elkin said at the region’s industry supporting committee meeting. ‘However, it’s not possible to sign the agreement right now because last year’s obligations haven’t been met yet. The reason for this is that our salary accounts have been arrested and we need to pay the debt and the fines imposed on those accounts. The sum in question is only 6 million RUR, but the

‘Klyuchevsk Ferrous Alloys Works isn’t always looked at sympathetically when trying to cope with its problems. For one, we still haven’t been able to reach an agreement with TGK-9. Any delay in payment by seven or ten days leads to a power cutoff warning, and the company’s employees arrive on our premises four days later. This is an extremely complicated issue,’ President of Russian Special Alloys Management Company Vyacheslav Grigoriev announced in the course of the region’s industry supporting committee meeting. ‘We all know that Klyuchevsk Ferrous Alloys Works is an environmentally

Alfa-Bank stopped offering its customers a number of services formerly rendered by Bank Severnaya Kazna. According to the spokesperson for the bank, after Bank Severnaya Kazna’s integration into Alfa-Bank was completed on April 3, 2009, the bank will no longer be signing any new acquiring agreements or providing bank cards for the companies to pay salaries to employees; nor will the legal entities be able to use e-banking any more.

The net profit of Uralsvyazinform, the mobile and landline operator went down by 27.3% last year (from 3,685,300,000 RUR in 2007 to 2,677,900,000 RUR in 2008). The company’s sales revenues dropped by 17.6% (from 8,649,300,000 RUR in 2007 to 7,124,600,000 RUR in 2008), while its pre-tax profit plummeted by 25.2% (from 5,546,400,000 RUR in 2007 to 4,146,400,000 RUR in 2008). At the same time, the company’s expenses rose by 9.7% (from 30,503,400,000 RUR in 2007 to 33,456,400,000 RUR in 2008), with less money spent on personnel and agents’ fees and more money spent on capital consumption,

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin spoke to his deputies and ministers about the ways of helping the victims of Korkinskaya mine methane ignition accident. According to the Minister for Radiation and Environmental Safety, all the necessary measures have already been taken: two heavily hurt miners have been transferred to Chelyabinsk burn center, while those less seriously wounded received medical assistance as well. The mine is now operating as usual, while an ad hoc committee is looking into the causes of the ignition. In addition to discussing the mining accident, the Governor

After Alfa-Bank has closed down the customer forum on Bank Severnaya Kazna’s official website, the bank’s clients set up a new online communication platform, a number of Yekaterinburg Internet forums report. The new forum can be found at Bank Severnaya Kazna’s official website’s forum stopped operating on April 2, 2009. According to the bank’s official report, the decision was taken ‘in order to make the bank-customer communication more systematic.’ ‘On the one hand, the forum kept getting increasingly fewer visitors; on the other hand, more visitors checked out our Q&A section,’ Bank

The Hellenic Republic’s visa center is going to start operating in Yekaterinburg this April, the Ambassador of Greece to Russia informed Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Eduard Rossel, the spokesperson for the Governor reports. Meanwhile, Minister of Tourism of Greece Kostas Markopulos announced at a press conference in Moscow that thanks to a new visa-issuing system launched in September 2008 the whole procedure would only take forty-eight hours. The Ambassador says the Greek authorities are currently considering the idea of setting up the Republic’s Consulate General in Yekaterinburg.