BINBANK’s Board of Directors decided in the course of a recent meeting to close down the bank’s representation in Nizhniy Tagil, Sverdlovsk Region. This means the office located at 64 Lenin St. will soon stop operating. The exact date of the liquidation is to be set by BINBANK’s President Mikhail Shishkhanov; he will also have to carry out all the procedures necessary to go through with the closure.

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin met some of the Russian international prize-winners to thank them for their achievements. This meeting was attended by the world judo and boxing championships winners and by the sports players who won in the Paralympics. Governor Sumin said Chelyabinsk Region was a home to the greatest number of Russian champions. The local schoolchildren’s world boxing championship’s medals made the Russian national team the world’s No.1, for instance. ‘Your victories stem from some hard, never-stopping work. You focused all your strength and stamina on the

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin met some of the Russian international prize-winners to thank them for their achievements. This meeting was attended by the world judo and boxing championships winners and by the sports players who won in the Paralympics. Governor Sumin said Chelyabinsk Region was a home to the greatest number of Russian champions. The local schoolchildren’s world boxing championship’s medals made the Russian national team the world’s No.1, for instance. ‘Your victories stem from some hard, never-stopping work. You focused all your strength and stamina on the

Ural Airlines’ Planning Department experts report the airline is going to fly this year’s millionth passenger on September 17, 2009. ‘We are not quite sure yet which flight this lucky passenger is going to take, but we’d say it will probably be our Yekaterinburg-Saint Petersburg flight (departure time is 2:45 PM), or our Yekaterinburg-Prague flight (departure time is 2:00 PM). This millionth passenger will receive congratulations and presents from the carrier; what is more, all of this flight’s passengers will be treated to a glass of champagne,’ the spokesperson for the company said to an

TGK-9 Sverdlovsk Region-based power facilities are currently being prepared for this fall and winter’s heating season. The company reports that, as far as industrial enterprises are concerned, its greatest debtors are Russian Chrome 1915 (which owes TGK-9 over 11 million RUR) and Uralmash Machine-Building Corporation (which owes the power supplier more than 60 million RUR). All in all, the regional companies owe 2.18 billion RUR to their electricity and power suppliers, of which 1.5 billion RUR is made up of the communal housing services departments’ debts.

‘Most of Sverdlovsk Region’s cities and towns are not prepared to face the upcoming heating season, since they owe a lot of money to the energy sector enterprises,’ the spokesperson for Sverdlovenergosbyt, the local power supplier, announced today. The region’s communal housing services departments still haven’t paid off their debts by mid-September, with the greatest sums owed to the suppliers by the departments of Nizhniy Tagil, Pervouralsk, Artemovskiy, Tavda, Kamensk-Uralskiy, Ivdel, Serov, Krasnouralskiy, Kamyshlov, Kirovgrad, Revda, Berezovskiy, and Rezh. According to the spokesperson

‘Since our end consumers haven’t been paying their gas bills, we now come to owe nearly 3 billion RUR to our natural gas supplier,’ Uralsevergaz’s Deputy GD Dmitriy Lavrenko said at a recent press conference in Yekaterinburg. ‘It is very fortunate that the supplier shows a lot of tolerance and understanding, so reaching a compromise should be possible. Besides, we keep using bank loans to pay off our debts, and we intend to keep doing so in the future,’ he added. ‘The way I see it, the main problem with our consumers’ debts lies in the difficulty of law-enforcement procedures. In fact, we do

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court keeps looking into the claim laid by Raiffeisen-Bank vs. Pnevmostroymashina and PSM-Gidravlika. The plaintiff insists on being paid over 119.21 million RUR. The court has already turned down the bank’s demand to have the defendants’ mortgaged property arrested. The property in question comprised a group of auxiliary shops, two land allotments, and a detached building with some extensions. The court ruled that the plaintiff’s application failed to produce evidence of this arrest being the only way to make sure the court’s decision could be executed. Nor did

Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) keeps testing its second polymeric coating unit. The representatives of the Italian Fata Hunter (the equipment supplier) and the team of experts from Prokat Montazh (the project’s general contractor) as well as the field engineers from the enterprise’s electric lab are still working in the coating shop. For one, they have already trained the unit’s future operators using the company’s first polymeric coating unit that was launched in July 2004. According to MMK’s PR Department, the existence of the first unit made mastering the second one much easier,

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin made a few wage arrears-preventing proposals at the recent administration meeting dedicated to labor law compliance. Sumin believes some changes have to be made in the existing legislation; for one, there has to appear an amendment that would enable the regional officials to ask the tax authorities for data on taxpayers’ debts. ‘Our executive branch is actually deprived of essential information on the local enterprises’ financial state,’ he said. The Governor also announced it was necessary to track down the reasons for the accumulation of wage

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court started considering the claim laid by AKB ROSBANK vs. Uralvagonzavod Scientific and Production Enterprise regarding the latter’s 167.49-million-ruble debt. The bank placed its claim papers with the court on August 10, 2009. During the session on September 14, 2009, the defendant is expected to produce a written, well-grounded response to the claim as well as the originals of their promissory notes.

The credit rating service demoted Russian Alfa-Bank’s counteragent’s long-term credit rating from BB- to B+, while at the same time affirming its short-term rating at B, with Stable Rating Outlook. ‘Nevertheless, Alfa-Bank’s national scale rating had to be downgraded from ruAA- to ruA+. However, we did take all of the bank’s ratings off our CreditWatch list after they hit it on June 17, 2009 with Negative Rating Outlooks. As for our assessment of Alfa-Bank’s financial stability, this criterion’s rating went down from ВВВ- to BB+. All in all, these downgrades mainly stem from the troubles with

Nizhnity Tagil Iron & Steel Works (NTMK) might get rid of its membership in Russian Steel Consortium Non-Commercial Partnership after such a recommendation will probably be made by NTMK’s Board of Directors at the company’s last AGM. The annual general meeting is to take place in Nizhniy Tagil on October 16, 2009.

UTair Airlines serviced 2,207,010 people in January-August 2009, which was 2.3% less than a year earlier, the carrier’s press officer reports. In addition to this, the airline handled 1,063.8 tons of mail in the eight months of 2009, which was actually 20.3% less than in January-August 2008. However, the company flew 389,370 passengers in August, which exceeded the figures for the year before by 4.3%. What is more, UTair’s passenger turnover in August 2009 was 5.8% greater than in August 2008, reaching 686,518,000 passenger-kilometers.

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court recently declared a Pervouralsk-based metalwork manufacturer insolvent. The plant will now have to undergo six-month bankruptcy proceedings, to be completed on March 6, 2010. As a matter of fact, the plant itself had placed its bankruptcy application with the court.

Sverdlovsk Gubernskiy Bank recently launched a new consumer loan offer that is extremely easy to get: one only needs two pieces of documentation, and no guarantee or guarantors are necessary. The maximum amount of money one can take out from the bank is 50,000 RUR for a one-year period. Customers can pay the loan back in one or several installments without any extra charges, fines, or commissions. ‘This is, in fact, the bank’s third lending offer. Our latest market research made it clear that consumers need some easily available loans for small-scale spending. This loan type is specifically

The Russian Federation Ministry of Defense will buy 716 apartments from RENOVA-StroyGroup in Yekaterinburg’s Academic district. The decision to this extent was taken at the end of the ministry’s special auction. The MoD declared they were totally satisfied with the quality of the apartments; Deputy Defense Minister general-colonel Vladimir Filippov, who visited the district, said the housing was better than the economy class dwellings in many ways, even though the price (33,600 RUR per square meter) fit the state-set range. The ministry is ready to buy as many as 2,000 apartments from RENOVA

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court keeps looking into the case laid by ZAO Nash Dom against ISK Megapolis. The plaintiff took the case to court in order to have their construction contract 210/P as of June 20, 2007 cancelled. They had contracted Megapolis to build apartment blocks 1A, 1B, 1V, 3A, 3B, 3V, 6A, 6B, 6V, and 6G in Yasnaya St. - Shaumyan St. - Volgogradskaya St. – Gromov St. Nash Dom also wanted to get its 54.96 million RUR worth of advance payments back; however, in the course of the court hearing the plaintiff agreed to decrease the claim down to 43.85 million RUR. At the same

‘The company handled 20.5% less freight in January-August 2009 than in the eight months of 2008,’ says President of Russian Railways Public Company Vladimir Yakunin. ‘In August, the output decrease only amounted to 12.3% against a year earlier, whereas our stone coal shipments even rose by 4.1%. What is more, our shipments of non-ferrous ore, granulated slag, slate stone, press cake, and fish increased as well,’ he notes. ‘As for the passenger turnover, this has gone down by 11% since the beginning of the year; this drop covers a 9% decrease in the number of long-distance passengers and a 16%

Yekaterinburg’s Kirovskiy district court is to consider the claim laid by A.G. Chernyshev against Avtoland Sever on September 11, 2009. The plaintiff wants to be paid the money the car dealer owes him as well as the interest and the moral damage compensation. Incidentally, this isn’t the only civil action taken against Ford’s official dealer in Yekaterinburg. The court has already heard a number of other claims laid against Avtoland and Avtoland Sever, all of which were based on consumer rights infringement charges. Moreover, three more claims will be considered on September 15, 2009. The