Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Alexander Misharin met Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Latvia to the Russian Federation Edgars Skuja. The two officials discussed the ways in which the two territories could cooperate. For one, they saw some good opportunities for machine-building development through joint small and medium ventures. Governor Misharin asked the region’s Minister for Trade, Food, and Services Dmitriy Nozhenko to find the way of working with the Latvian suppliers directly, without any intermediaries. He also said that UMMC Holding was a great

A customer of Bank24.ru was faced with a number of problems when trying to open and then to close a deposit through the bank’s e-system. The incident was described on one of Yekaterinburg’s popular forums. To start with, the bank took a very long time considering the customer’s application. In fact, it took the bank a week instead of the declared two days. Closing the deposit when its term expired was also a problem. The customer reports the bank was to have closed the deposit and to have paid the interest on February 2, 2010. However, this never happened. On February 3, 2010, the customer

The Russian Federation Ministry for Industry and Trade came up with the list of car makes that are liable to recycling under the new stimulus program. The program is expected to boost the sales of new cars through recycling the old ones. Every Russian citizen who recycles an automobile which is over ten years old is given a 50,000-ruble discount by a dealer in case he or she buys a car produced in Russia (and this has to be one of the cars on the list in question). The Russian Federation Government allocated over 11 billion RUR for the program implementation. The program is to be launched on

FINAM Investment Company decreased its target price assessment of OAO FSK EES’s ordinary shares from $.0.0193 down to $0.0135. This is the company’s forecast for the end of 2010. Nevertheless, FINAM still recommends buying the electricity provider’s shares. FINAM actually decided to reconsider the target price after the Federal Tariff Service confirmed the parameters which FSK EES is to use when switching to RAB-based tariff design, and also because the company’s management came up with some new financial forecasts.

Kirovskiy supermarket chain recently closed down two stores at 16 Lenin Ave. and at 62 Lenin Ave. in Yekaterinburg, the chain’s press officer Olga Nagibina said to an UrBC reporter. ‘As it happens, we own about 98% of all our shopping space, but a little bit is rented. The building at 16 Lenin Ave. belonged to two different proprietors, one of whom decided to sell his bit. So we did not think it would be expedient to renew our lease,’ she explained. ‘As for the store at 62 Lenin Ave, some technical examinations made it clear as early as December 2009 that the rented building was not in good

‘We can currently offer our customers only a limited number of last year’s models because the distributor does not supply us with the amount the market needs. The production of cars was reduced at the end of 2009, as it was feared the unstable economic situation could affect the customers’ purchasing power badly, so the car manufacturer might suffer from overstocking. As a result, these wrong forecasts have led to shortage, with the demand outgrowing the supply,’ says Head of Toyota Center Yekaterinburg Zapad’s Sales Department Sergey Nosov. ‘Ironically, some of the most popular cars at the

‘We have been witnessing some revival of Yekaterinburg car market lately. For one, customers are once again interested in expensive makes. Subaru has just come up with a new and quite high-priced model that is already so popular that we have a shortage. Our customers find themselves having to wait for two or three months before these popular makes arrive,’ Head of OOO Subaru Center Yekaterinburg Yug’s Sales Department Sergey Mankevitch told UrBC. OOO Subaru Center Yekaterinburg Yug is Subaru’s official dealer in Yekaterinburg. ‘Making plans and coming up with forecasts for this year’s

The public activists of Nizhniy Tagil, Sverdlovsk Region, are currently collecting signature for the petition to the Russian Federation Public Prosecutor’s Office and the President of the Russian Federation Dmitriy Medvedev’s Administration that calls for looking into the business activity of Russian Standard Bank. The petition was designed by Nizhniy Tagil branch of Russia’s Young Lawyers, a pressure group. The branch’s head Evgeniy Ryakin says they have been getting plenty of complaints regarding the methods the bank in question employs to collect loan debt. What is more, the lawyers

The representatives of Sverdlovsk Region division and Revdinskiy and Nizhneserginskiy departments of Rospotrebnadzor (the state consumer rights watchdog) carried out a scheduled field check of Nizhneserginskiy metal goods plant (NLMK Group’s member). The inspection detected a number of grave health legislation offenses, all of which were related to sanitary arrangements aimed at making the working conditions better and safer. The plant’s recent reconstruction that brought about some new production technologies was assumed to have improved the employees’ labor conditions. However, the

‘We are currently looking into a case involving the local taxi companies; the offense consists in violating the existing advertising laws. In this case, the companies have been declared guilty. We are also considering the question of whether Yekaterinburg-based Koltsovo Airport legally carried out a tender and selected Taxi-Gorod as ‘the airport’s exclusive hauler’,’ Head of Sverdlovsk Region division of the Russian Federation Federal Antimonopoly Service Tatiana Kolotova said at a press conference in Yekaterinburg. ‘Following the tender, Taxi-Gorod was given a special parking lot on the

It was discovered that VUZ-Bank (Life Financial Group) violated the regulations related to informational transparency on the stock market. This is why Ural Federal District’s division of the Federal Financial Market Service of the Russian Federation ruled that VUZ-Bank would have to face administrative liability and pay a fine. The fine comes to 700,000 RUR.

ERGO Rus (an insurance company and member of the German ERGO Group) decided to stop signing new voluntary medical insurance contracts for the time being. ‘The current risks on the Russian medical services market and the state of the Russian laws won’t give an insurer a chance to work efficiently and offer the customers high quality service comparable with the European insurance standards,’ the company explains. ERGO Rus declared, however, that it could guarantee full compliance with all the obligations resulting from the already existing agreements. The company operates its subsidiaries in

A verdict of ‘guilty’ was pronounced upon the head of TOO AstanaEnergoPromStroy & Co Adkham Mirsogatov, who is believed to allow the completion of the building and assembly jobs at the fourth power-generating unit of Beloyarskaya nuclear plant in Sverdlovsk Region without a license, the spokesperson for Sverdlovsk Region public prosecution authorities reports. Zarechniy district court considered the evidence provided by the public prosecutor from Beloyarskiy district’s prosecution department and decided that Adkham Mirsogatov, who was the General Director of AstanaEnergoPromStroy &

‘Our sales decreased a little bit in September-December 2009, but they started to reach the earlier volumes in January 2010,’ Director of Frey Wille’s Yekaterinburg branch Larissa Kuyantseva said to UrBC. ‘Speaking of last year as a whole, we can definitely say the economic recession did not affect our jewellery shop. Moreover, we did not experience any serious selling difficulties until September 2009. Frey Wille even expanded its business in October 2009 by trying to reach a new audience: namely, we set up a new shop in Europe Trade & Business Center,’ Kuyantseva added. ‘This business

The Federal Financial Market Service of the Russian Federation declared that the issue of E.S.Yalamov Ural Optical & Mechanical Plant’s certified inconvertible interest-bearing bonds (state serial number 4-02-00002-Т as of December 18, 2008) must be halted for the time being. The news has been announced via the Service’s official website.

Reftinskaya state district power plant is a major air and water polluter, Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Alexander Misharin said while visiting the plant’s premises. ‘To grow greener, the plant needs to switch from the coal produced in Ekibastuz to that made in Kuzbass: this will decrease the amount of harmful emissions by about 30% to 40% as well as make the plant’s performance more efficient. Only 1 million out of 11 million tons used by Reftinskaya to produce electricity last year was actually delivered from Kuznetsk basin last year. However, it is essential that the plant uses at least 4

The internal rules and policy of Moscow-based ZAO KAB Bank Société Générale Vostok and Moscow-based OAO Nordea Bank have not been approved of by the Federal Financial Market Service of the Russian Federation so as to counteract laundering proceeds from criminal activity as well as terrorist financing.

Dmitriy Vinogradov is no longer a shareholder of OAO Bank Severnaya Kazna (the asset of Alfa-Bank). He used to own a little over 10% of the bank’s shares, which have recently been sold to VALLAUR LIMITED. Yekaterinburg-based Bank Severnaya Kazna had to undergo a financial recovery procedure at the end of 2008 after it had been very near bankruptcy. The procedure was carried out by the bank’s new owner, Alfa-Bank, and Deposit Insurance Agency. The new proprietor intends to close Bank Severnaya Kazna down as an independent business and is now gradually moving to the bank’s total phase-out. In

‘Lucky Motors’ Yekaterinburg show rooms are currently displaying the car makes designed in 2008 and 2009. We have to explain to the customers willing to buy this year’s models that they will only arrive in March or April,’ Lucky Motors Sales Manager Stepan Pidzhakov explained to an UrBC reporter. ‘For the time being, such customers interested in the newest models can sign a preliminary delivery agreement with us. The minimum down payment will come to 10,000 RUR in this case. One has to bear in mind that the price is only a preliminary one as well, so the customer agreement states that it

Sverdlovsk Region’s division of the Russian Federation Federal Security Service did not offer any license allowing OOO Inbank to use or distribute any cryptographic aids,’ the division’s press secretary Anna Lastovetskaya informed UrBC. In the meantime, Inbank (formerly known as OOO Uran) keeps testing its Internet-Bank system for the last month and uses it to handle the payments of its private and business customers. Under the current legislation, such services must be licensed. ‘The Federal Act 128 on licensing states that banking activity falls under the provisions described in Article 17