Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin directed 22 million RUR to complete the heating supply network’s upgrade in the village of Bairamgulovo, Argayashskiy district. The spokesperson for the Governor reports this aid from the region’s budget will help the village finish up all the jobs. Two new gas boilers will replace the thirty-seven-year-old coal boiler (responsible for discharging fifty tons of dust and soot a season), while the other bits of obsolete machinery will give way to some new Italian equipment that is both noiseless and environmentally friendly as well as almost fully

Uralkaliy’s Board of Directors decided to nearly halve the number of the new Supervisory Board’s members. Under the new regulations, the Board comprises Vice President for Strategic Development Mikhail Antonov, General Director and Chairman of the Supervisory Board Vladislav Baumgertner, Deputy GD and Economics and Finance Director Viktor Belyakov, Deputy GD Sergey Dyakov, HR Director Elena Samsonova, and Director for Legal and Corporate Issues Marina Shvetsova. The old Board used to have thirteen members, including the company’s PR Director Eduard Koridorov.

SKB-Bank’s top managers recently met Visa’s General Director for Russia Maarten van den Belt, who visited the bank’s premises with Visa CEMEA Manager, SKB-Bank’s curator Elizaveta Voinskaya, the bank’s press officer reports. The meeting was devoted to a number of issues ranging from the cards’ design to the ways of promoting a cashless culture.

‘In the first half of 2009, MRSK Urala’s electricity supply output reached 37,199.7 million kilowatt-hours, which was 17% less than in the first half of 2008. Only about 33,861.7 million kilowatt-hours supplied were actually used productively. This, again, was 18.2% less than in the first half of 2008,’ MRSK Urala’s Deputy GD for Development and Sales Sergey Zolotarev announced at an online conference coordinated by FINAM Investment Company. ‘The recession keeps affecting the Russian economy rather badly and thus spurs on the industrial production decline. According to the data we have

‘Sverdlovsk Region owes us about 2 billion RUR for the previous heating season services; this is an unprecedented amount of money, in fact,’ the spokesperson for Uralsevergaz Oleg Vlasov said to an UrBC reporter. ‘This year’s heating season is to start on September 15, 2009. Prior to this, we must get all the money from our debtors; otherwise we simply won’t be able to purchase the natural gas to launch the seasonal services. This is exactly why we had to employ some thoroughgoing measures: if the debt happens to be pending for over two months, we’ll have to stop supplying the gas to the

Bank VTB 24 press service claims 3.8 million RUR was illegally transferred into Uralprivatbank’s client accounts after this money had been stolen from Gelix Center for Democracy and Human Rights Promotion’s account in Bank VTB 24. ‘Bank VTB 24 Saint Petersburg branch’s security service detected a suspicious transaction within the Bank-Client Online system on August 7, 2009. 3.8 million RUR was taken out of Gelix Center’s account and was first transferred into another Bank VTB 24 customer’s account and then into client accounts at Uralprivatbank. Gelix Center was informed of this doubtful

The network provider’s management looked into the results of MRSK Urala’s performance in the first half of 2009 during an ad hoc conference coordinated by FINAM Investment Company. According to MRSK Urala’s Deputy GD for Capital Construction Sergey Semerikov, their investment program for 2009 had to be halved against the figures they had initially set out for. ‘At the end of 2008, we expected to have invested about 7.7 billion RUR in various projects, but now we find we are forced to stick with the modest 2.9 billion RUR. The spending cuts mostly affected the buildings whose commercial

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court is going to look into the claim laid by Global Gaming Expo (GGE) against Bank24.ru. The plaintiff insists on the defendant paying them 186,649,428.64 RUR. The court hearing was scheduled for September 9, 2009. Now GGE was actually founded by Bank24.ru’s former BOD member Alexei Kalinichenko. During the preliminary hearing on August 12, 2009, the bank’s representative declared the company did not accept GGE’s claims. The executive explained the bank had never written off any sums mentioned in the plaintiff’s application. All the transactions were carried out

‘The company’s profits were actually lower in the first half of 2009 than had been expected. This largely has to do with the customers’ decreased purchasing power. Besides, there are plenty of legal entities trying to reduce their outgoings, including telecommunications spending. At the same time, our revenues have been on the increase lately,’ Uralsvyazinform’s Deputy GD and Commercial Director Pavel Zaitsev announced at a press conference in Yekaterinburg. In fact, the average number of workers employed by the telecommunications provider came to 22,050 people in June 2009, which was 8.4%

The number of people Utair Airlines flew in January-July 2009 declined by 3.6% in comparison with January-July 2008. The amount of mail transferred by the carrier decreased by 38.9%. ‘Over the seven months of 2009, the airline managed to nearly restore its ante-recession passenger turnover figures: so far, 1,817,640 passengers have flown with us since the beginning of the year, compared with 1,884,765 people a year earlier,’ the carrier reports.

On August 11, 2009, it was reported at the Governor of Sverdlovsk Region crisis-defying committee’s meeting in Yekaterinburg that 12,000 people employed at Uralvagonzavod Scientific and Production Enterprise were laid off temporarily. The committee feels the situation at the plant is rather difficult, with things recovering slowly. In May, for instance, as many as 17,000 people were put on leaves.

The workers of Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) sheet-rolling shop No. 7 have recently mastered the technology related to cold-formed section production. These sections are meant to be used for building bridges. The order for the sections was placed by KurganStalMost which needed A-line formed sections for fortifying the bridge structures. The manufactured section is 8mm thick and 12 meters long; it was made of S420MС steel in accordance with the DINEN 10149-2:1995 standards. ‘We chose this highly durable steel type which is relatively new to MMK because today’s building know-hows

The net profit of Ural Plant RTI plunged by 2.759 million RUR, or 45.57% (from 6.055 million RUR in the first quarter of 2009 to 3.296 million RUR in the second quarter). The enterprise explains their profits dropped due to their customers’ increasing debts for the goods they bought from the plant and for the energy resources consumed. This meant the company had to set up additional bad debt reserves of 19.723 million RUR.

Rusfinans Bank came up with its performance report for the second quarter of 2009. The company’s net losses amounted to 119.752 million RUR, compared with 265.854 million RUR worth of profits obtained in the first quarter of the year. The bank explains the losses were brought about by greater commission expenses and smaller interest yields.

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court is going to look into the claim laid by Global Gaming Expo (GGE) against Bank24.ru. The plaintiff insists on the defendant paying them 186,649,428.64 RUR. The preliminary court hearing was scheduled for August 12, 2009. Now GGE was actually founded by Bank24.ru’s former BOD member Alexei Kalinichenko. In addition, the case features Alfa-Bank as a third party with no claims of its own. Alexei Kalinichenko’s business activity involved handling transactions on Forex foreign exchange market, with the ROI declared at 30% to 200% a year. The money needed for the

PSM-Gidravlika placed its petition with Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court, requesting to cancel the earlier decision to claim their property mortgaged with Bank VTB. The bank’s Yekaterinburg subsidiary laid its claim against PSM-Gidravlika on June 23, 2009. Bank VTB insisted on getting 51.83 million RUR worth of debts and on claiming the company’s mortgaged property. A day later, the court ruled in the bank’s favor.

Probusinessbank’s two Yekaterinburg-based assets (both of which are Life Group members) were rated among Russia’s Top 200 banks by Interfax agency, getting adjoining positions in the second hundred. According to this ranking, VUZ-Bank’s assets went down by 1.7% in the first half of 2009, whereas the assets of Bank24.ru rose by 1.9% over the same period of time. So the banks were rated Russia’s 176th and 177th largest banks, respectively.

Despite the current economic difficulties, the state must make sure the Russian retirees get their pensions on time and in full, Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin said at a meeting with the Russian Pension Fund’s regional division CEO Viktor Chernobrovin. The latter, in his turn, assured the Governor that all of the region’s pensioners were getting their payments without delays. Chernobrovin said the special federal bill provided for a pension rise on January 1, 2010. The insured pension part of all those who retired after 2002 is to be raised by 10%, with an extra 1% increase per

Ural Pipe Plant produced 73,248 tons of tubular goods in January-July 2009, which was 43.7% less than a year earlier, the enterprise’s Marketing Department reports. The plant also cut its oil pipeline output by 8.1%, so only 43,032 tons of those were made in seven months of 2009. The shaped tubes output plunged by 2.76 times and came to 30,216 tons. The company shipped 73,279 tons of tubes to consumers in January-July 2009, including 41,676 tons of oil country tubular goods and 31,603 tons of shaped tubes. The overall decrease in shipments came to 42.8%, with OCTG and shaped tubes shipments

‘It happens quite often these days that just two or three people who own the business actually decide the company’s future. This is unacceptable, especially in the Urals, where many enterprises date back to the eighteenth century and gather entire cities around them. Such decisions must be taken collectively, with the workers having their say, too. Otherwise we might end up with a case like that of Egorshinskiy radio plant where the proprietors simply pilfered the business down to pieces. As soon as the economic recession kicked in, they increased their own salaries so that they became 400