OAO Sverdlovsk Gubernskiy Bank was rated Ural Federal District’s 9th largest bank by Interfax’s Center for Economic Analysis recently. According to Interfax-CEA, the bank’s assets increased by 5.8% in the first quarter of 2010 and reached 19.4 billion RUR. This impressive growth made it possible for Gubernskiy Bank to improve its region-wide rating. There are fifty-two Ural Federal District-based banks on Interfax-CEA’s list altogether.

Experts from Sverdlovsk Region’s division of Rospotrebnadzor (the state consumer rights watchdog) checked OOO Alcor-C (L’Etoile), a cosmetics chain, for compliance with the consumer rights and sanitary legislation. The check involved inspecting 3,725 items offered for sale, 2,033 of which were called off. This amounted to 4.6% of all the goods inspected. Among the discarded items were 372 cosmetic products past their sell-by date. This was 18% of the total amount. Among the problems detected by the inspectors were the facts that some products offered for sale expired as early as February

‘We have had to reject more visa applications this year than the year before. However, the total number of people who have been refused a visa still comes to only 2% to 2.5% of all the applicants. Most of the refusals have to do with the applicants providing inaccurate information. Nevertheless, there can also be some ‘technical’ reasons, for example, people not submitting a particular document,’ the Consul General of the French Republic in Yekaterinburg Claude Crouail said at a recent press conference in Yekaterinburg. ‘One example of inaccurate information is some fictional hotel booking.

‘We issued about 16,000 visas last year, which was 30% less than in the year 2008,’ the Czech Republic’s Consul General in Yekaterinburg Miroslav Ramez said at a recent press conference in Yekaterinburg. ‘However, we can see a positive trend in 2010. The number of Czech visas grew by 8% in February, by 14% in March, and by 12% in April. This means traveling is on the increase, so we expect to issue some 20,000 visas this year,’ he added. ‘We reject 1% to 1.5% of visa applications, mainly for reasons of factual inaccuracy,’ the Consul explained.

OAO Ural Airlines now makes it possible for its customers to check-in online. Using a step-by-step interface, a passenger can choose the most attractive seat, check-in the accompanying passengers and get a boarding card at any suitable time, as the online check-in is available twenty-three hours before the flight and finishes about four hours before take-off. To check in, one should go to the company’s website at www.uralairlines.ru, select Online Check-In on the main page’s menu options, and follow the instructions. Passengers are identified through their e-ticket number or through their

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Mikhail Yurevitch decided to allocate some budget subsidies to a number of social welfare construction projects in the region, the spokesperson for the Governor reports. First of all, some money will be directed to the buildings that can be finished and commissioned before the end of this year. As far as the city of Chelyabinsk is concerned, the budget will finance the completion of the positron emission tomography center and the acquisition of the medical equipment for it (which will cost 43 million RUR) as well as the completion of children’s clinical hospital

‘Getting our customers to pay is still the company’s major problem for now. Even though their debt has been going down lately, IES Holding’s customers still owe us some 2.5 billion RUR for the heating energy consumed. We are going to use all the legitimate means available to get our money. We really need it this summer in order to prepare for the next heating season,’ Director of OOO Sverdlovsk Heating Supply Company Sergey Yefimov said in the course of a conference dedicated to the success of last winter’s heating season in Yekaterinburg. ‘We managed to get through the season without any

The Republic of Azerbaijan’s Consulate-General is to open in Yekaterinburg in the course of a solemn ceremony on May 13, 2010. The consulate is located at 5 Karl Liebknecht St. The opening ceremony is to be attended by Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Alexander Misharin and the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the Republic of Azerbaijan to Russia Polad Byul Byul ogly, the spokesperson for the Governor reports. The Republic of Azerbaijan’s Consul-General in Yekaterinburg Sultan Magomed ogly Gasymov assumed office in September 2009.

The heads of General Motors, Toyota, and Nissan Russia-based factories placed their official petition with the Head of the Russian Federation Customs Service Andrei Yemelyanov in order to explain that their businesses run a risk of assembly line stoppages due to the recent changes in the customs clearance regulations for car parts, says Kommersant. The car manufacturers say in the petition that several customs posts have already been closed down in Saint Petersburg, which made the factories ‘adopt new logistics schemes urgently and incur additional losses related to the car parts delivery.’

UMMC Holding expects to pay 3.7 billion RUR worth of taxes to Sverdlovsk Region’s budget in 2010. The figure might even be greater after all, the company’s General Director Andrei Kositsyn announced when this year’s socioeconomic agreement between UMMS Holding and Sverdlovsk Region Government was signed. ‘Considering the current non-ferrous metal prices, our payments will probably be even greater than declared in the agreement,’ he said. ‘Given the non-ferrous and precious metal prices shaped at London Metal Exchange, our company has gone back to its ante-recession levels. In some respects we

President of Khanty-Mansiyskiy Non-State Retirement Fund Maxim Filatov is about to resign, an informed source told Kommersant. The newspaper reports Mr. Filatov’s resignation has not been officially announced because the fund’s Board has not accepted it yet. In the meantime, Governor of Khanty-Mansiyskiy Autonomous Region’s Counselor for Economics Sergey Shubin was appointed acting President of the fund. Sergey Shubin refused to provide any comments on this appointment, saying he was too busy, whereas Maxim Filatov did not answer the phone. Kommersant believes Filatov’s resignation has to do

The Ural division of Rostechnadzor (the state environmental, technological, and nuclear safety watchdog) completed its multi-faceted inspection of Sverdlovenergo, (the subsidiary of MRSK Urala, a power distribution company). The inspection was conducted in accordance with Rostechnadzor’s Provision on scheduled inspections aimed at checking MRSK Urala and its daughter enterprises’ compliance with the existing regulations, the spokesperson for the watchdog reports. For one, the inspectors looked into the way Sverdlovenergo complied with the legislative electric power industry requirements and

‘In addition to the obvious negative impact the recent explosion in Raspadskaya mine will have on its owner’s business, this accident might also badly affect the company’s key coal consumers, that is, Novolipetsk Iron & Steel Works (NLMK) and Evraz Group. These companies buy 14% and 13%, respectively, of all the coal produced at Raspadskaya mine. We do not think it improbable that these enterprises might be faced with some steel production stoppages because of the shrinking coal supplies. This is why their stock might experience some pressure,’ Kapital Investment & Finance Company’s

ZAO Ural Turbine Plant failed to meet the environmental authorities’ demands in full, Rospotrebnadzor announced recently. The experts from the state consumer rights watchdog carried out an unscheduled inspection of the enterprise in order to check how well the company complies with order 01-20-11/6665 issued by Yekaterinburg’s chief health officer on October 18, 2009. The lab tests of waste water the plant keeps on dumping in the Osnovinka, a nearby river, showed that the company exceeded its maximum permissible discharge limits in December 2009-January 2010. To make matters worse, the

IES-Holding reduced its shareholding in OAO TGK-9, a power supplier, down to 43.9%. Prior to this action, the company used to own a 50.45% shareholding in the energy enterprise. At the same time, Semafer Holdings Limited raised its portion of the power supplier’s shares from 1.34% to 7.88%.

LSR Group might consider not declaring the dividends for the year 2009, the company’s BOD suggested to the Group’s shareholders. The shareholders’ annual general meeting is expected to take place in Saint Petersburg on June 30, 2010.

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Mikhail Yurevitch held a meeting with his deputies and ministers on a number of industrial and economic issues. In the course of this meeting, the Governor asked the officials to try and make the region more appealing to the potential investors. According to the spokesperson for the Governor, the region’s ministers and mayors will have to come up with a list of sites and areas that are located close to railways, motorways, and other important infrastructure objects. Each site has to be provided with a land use map and all the other necessary documents so that

‘As it happens, the mass rioting taking place in Athens, Greece at the moment cannot be classified as act of God. Officially, this is only some military action that is recognized as the act of God and thus enables a customer to refuse to travel to a particular country without pecuniary loss. The customers are always informed of all these conditions when the agreement for a holiday is signed at a travel agent’s. When this agreement with the tour operator gets signed, the clerks usually suggest that some refusal insurance should be obtained as well, but this insurance policy is paid for

The number of Internet users is rising fast in Ural Federal District as well as in the rest of Russia and has actually doubled in the last three years. Last year, 3.5 million people, or 36% of Ural Federal District’s dwellers, were reported to use the Net, RBC Market Research says. Most of the local e-audience are young people aged 18-34 with higher or specialized secondary education, with the number of male and female users being more or less the same. Despite the growing number of Internet users, however, Ural Federal District’s e-market is still a bit underdeveloped. Most of the local

OAO Uralcryomash’s Board of Directors suggested that the plant’s shareholders decide not to pay the dividend for the year 2009. The annual general meeting has been scheduled for June 18, 2010.