‘A customer used to receive a car they had bought within five days of the purchase, but now the dealers are beginning to take their time, sometimes making the wait period last up to a month. This is the case with Autoland, for instance,’ Europlan’s Business Development Director Alexander Mikhailov was reported as saying to Vedomosti. ‘The company has extended the official wait for the paid-for cars to thirty days,’ says Autoland-Siberia’s Konstantin Kudryavtsev. ‘This particular dealer is having some difficulty servicing its own debts, as Baltiyskiy Bank laid a claim against them in March.

URSA Bank’s shareholders gathered at the annual general meeting on May 8, 2009 to vote for the bank’s merger with MDM-Bank and MDM Banking Holding. This proposal received 99.64% of votes. In addition to taking this decision, the stockholders also approved of raising URSA Bank’s authorized capital through an issue of ordinary shares and the eighth-type preference shares that are to be converted from MDM-Bank and MDM Banking Holding’s ones. According to the bank’s press officer, the new, enlarged bank’s next challenge will be to get the company registered by the Bank of Russia. ‘The new bank is

Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Eduard Rossel met the General Director of Uralvagonzavod (the Nizhniy Tagil-based industrial giant) Oleg Sienko. The business executive explained that the global financial crisis had hit the enterprise really hard, with the company now owing about 39 billion RUR to its creditors (including .65 billion RUR worth of unpaid heating and electricity bills). At the same time, Uralvagonzavod did manage to pay all of its taxes, Sienko proudly noted. Head of Sverdlovsk Region Government Viktor Koksharov and his first deputy and Minister for Industry and Science Anatoly

Some of Gazpromneft-Ural’s shareholders have increased their existing holdings through the issuer’s additional share issue. As a result, Richard Enterprises S.A. raised its share from 14.5% to 15% of Gazpromneft-Ural’s common stock, while Gregory Trading S.A’s shareholding rose from 14.8% to 15.3%.

Fitch Ratings, the international rating agency, put Evraz Group SA’s long-term Issuer Default Rating (BB) and its priority unsecured rating (BB) on the Negative Rating Watch recently. At the same time, Mastercroft Limited's long-term Issuer Default Rating (BB) has also been placed on this list. As it happens, Mastercroft is Evraz’s daughter enterprise. Both companies’ short-term Issuer Default Ratings have been affirmed at B. The Negative Rating Watch indicates that Fitch is rather worried about the company’s overall debt/EBITDA and net debt/EBITDA ratios not keeping up with the level

The Federal Financial Marker Service decided to annul the license of Neva Financial & Industrial Group. The license used to entitle the company to performing brokerage and dealing operations as well as security transactions. The decision had to be taken because of Neva’s numerous violations of the Russian securities legislation throughout one year. These offenses involved violations of the Federal Financial Marker Service’s regulations. What is more, the Service has also canceled the qualification certificates issued to the company’s General Director Vitaliy Davidovitch and General

The value of Bank Severnaya Kazna’s assets dropped by 10.3% in April 2009, that is, from 240,440,238,000 RUR on April 1, 2009 to 236,283,721,000 RUR on May 1, 2009. The company reports this decrease has been brought about by the shrinking customer accounts and cutting back on their lending portfolio.

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin discussed the ways of increasing security of the future underground with the local anti-terrorist committee. The General Director of ChelyabMetroStroy Konstantin Abramchuk said as soon as the construction of the subway began in 2000, they made every effort to ensure its anti-terrorist safety. At the moment, there are two ways of protecting the subway and its future users: keeping an eye on the construction site by ChelyabMetroStroy’s security service (with four CCTV cameras, weekly raids and checks, and entry passes) and making sure the

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court held a preliminary hearing of the claim laid by Bank Severnaya Kazna’s minority shareholder Oksana Shishkina against Bank Severnaya Kazna and Alfa-Bank. The plaintiff insisted on Alfa-Bank making Bank Severnaya Kazna go through with the public buy-out offer. In the end, the court proceedings were postponed until May 14, 2009. Shishkina feels Alfa-Bank must buy her 1,276,500 shares at the highest price offered to the other stockholders. According to the plaintiff’s claim, Bank Severnaya Kazna must call a BOD meeting and make its recommendations to the

Public Services & Utilities Support Fund, the state corporation, canceled the general agreement they had with Khanty-Mansiyskiy Bank regarding the bank deposits, the spokesperson for the fund reports. The decision was taken because of Standard & Poor's demoting the bank’s credit rating down to В+ on April 21, 2009. Now this rating does not meet the criteria the Russian banks have to meet in order to be allowed to accept the fund’s reserves in the form of deposits.

SMU Uralmash’s Board of Directors decided in the course of their recent meeting that the stockholders should be advised to pass the dividend for 2008. The stockholders themselves are to gather at the annual general meeting on June 25, 2009. The other points on the agenda have to do with electing the new BOD and approving of the annual report.

The 20,000 employees of Uralvagonzavod who have been made redundant recently are to increase the number of Nizhniy Tagil’s unemployed to 30,000 people. The enterprise’s GD Oleg Sienko signed the decree making 20,000 workers temporarily redundant for the period of May 4-29, 2009. In the meantime, the local unemployment figures are still on the rise: prior to these layoffs, there were 10,479 jobless in the city, which comes to 5.1% of the working age population.

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin directed an additional 26 million RUR to compensating the expenses of public transport entities (which have offered a 50% fare discount to pensioners traveling to the countryside by bus). According to the spokesperson for the Governor, the money is to be distributed among the transport organizations of the region’s cities and towns to make sure the retirees can enjoy the discount on May 1, 2009-October 15, 2009. 4 million RUR was allotted to the city of Chelyabinsk for this purpose in May, so the compensation comes to 30 million RUR altogether, 20

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court is going to look into the claim laid by Bank Severnaya Kazna minority shareholder Oksana Shishkina against Bank Severnaya Kazna and Alfa-Bank regarding Alfa-Bank’s obligation to launch a public buy-out offer on Bank Severnaya Kazna shares. Shishkina believes Alfa-Bank must buy her shareholding (1,276,500 shares) at the highest price offered to the other stockholders. She insists on Bank Severnaya Kazna calling up a BOD meeting to make sure the BOD recommends this to the shareholders. The plaintiff also insists on having 85.021% of the bank’s registered

Yekaterinburg’s Kirovskiy district’s investigative authorities instituted criminal proceedings (with charges based on Article 146 (part 2) of the Russian Federation Criminal Code, that is, violation of author’s rights) against a local dweller. The case has been placed with the court, the spokesperson for the authorities report. The inquiry team believes the thirty-seven-year-old owner of an apartment in Mamin-Sibiryak St. was using the pirated Russian versions of Microsoft Windows Professional SP3, Microsoft Office 2007, and other software programs copyrighted by Microsoft. The total damage

Following the order issued by the head of Rostourism Anatoly Yarochkin, over 655 tour operators have been excluded from the federal register after they failed to provide any data on their financial guarantees for the new term, the spokesperson for Roustourism (the federal tourist agency) reports. There is a number of Yekaterinburg-based companies on this list: Inturline-99, TBK Inturline, Ural Tourist Company, Mega Tour, Orange Tour, Orange Tour Region, Finnex-tour, Mir-Voyage, Cleo Tur, Alexandria, Piligrim, Reise, Inform-Tour, Southern Cross-Yekaterinburg, Soglasiye-Ek, Kurortniy Mir,

The revenues of VIZ-Stal dropped by 73.42% in the first quarter of 2009 compared with the last one of 2008; at the same time, the company’s gross profit went down by 71.86%, its sales revenues by 75.77%, and its net profit by 74.56%. Such are the results of Novolipetsk Iron & Steel Works (NLMK) daughter enterprise’s performance in January-March 2009. NLMK’s press officer reports the problems have to do with the plummeting demand for VIZ-Stal’s products. ‘The global demand for transformer steel decreased at the beginning of the year because of the economic crisis and the customers’

METCOMBANK’s latest EGM resulted in the decision to go through with an additional share issue in 2009. This is expected to raise the bank’s authorized capital by 2 billion RUR; with the issue’s total volume coming to 4 billion RUR. The spokesperson for the bank reports METCOMBANK will thus be able to reach the scale of Russia’s Top 50 banks in terms of capital volume (and in terms of asset volume, potentially). The increase in capital will also widen the bank’s business development and lending opportunities.

It was detected in the course of an inspection carried out by Nizhniy Tagil environmental prosecution authorities that two local enterprises kept polluting the environment and had no discharge permits at that. Ruslich, an iron foundry based in Verkhnyaya Salda has got over ninety harmful emission points, while Uralskoye (dealing in building stone production) has got thirty-three such emission points and discharged over 40 tons of air pollutants in 2008. The General Prosecutor’s Office reports Ruslich’s chief engineer and Uralskoye’s environmental expert will have to face lawsuits, with

VUZ-Bank’s BOD meeting on May 4, 2009 resulted in the decision to suggest that the stockholders pass the dividend for 2008 at the upcoming AGM. The acquired revenues are expected to be directed to the capital investment and reserve funds.