14,000 square meters worth of housing has already been allocated for the army officers and war reserve military men in Yekaterinburg’s new Academic district. Prices will come to 33,600 RUR per square meter, even though the city’s average price reaches 60,000 RUR to 70,000 RUR,’ Sverdlovsk Region Minister for Construction and Architecture Alexander Karlov announced at a press conference in Yekaterinburg. ‘All in all, there are 2,000 square meters of ready housing in the region waiting for the Defense Ministry officers. This figure includes 700 square meters worth of apartments in

VTB (Foreign Trade Bank) had to direct 49.2 billion RUR, or 7.1% of its average annual lending portfolio to setting up devaluation reserves in the first quarter of 2009. This was more than the 4.8% spent in the last quarter of 2008 and is reported by the bank to be due to economic recession. The share of overdue and restructured loans in the lending portfolio’s total volume rose from 2.4% in 2008 to 4.3% in early 2009. Nevertheless, the bad debt compensation coefficient still looks rather comforting despite dropping from 147.6% last December to 118.3% in March 2009.

The next meeting related to the proposed bankruptcy of Akadem-Grad has been scheduled for September 29, 2009, the spokesperson for the court informed the UrBC reporter. The company placed its bankruptcy application with the court on June 29, 2009, claiming it was unable to fully meet its creditors’ claims as the claims amounted to more than the debtor’s assets were worth. Now Akadem-Grad owes 131,346,000 RUR to various entities, while its property has been estimated at 101,070,000 RUR.

The international rating agency demoted Alfa-Bank Ukraine’s long- and short-term Contractor Credit Rating from СС/С to SD/SD. The bank’s national scale rating was also decreased from uaCC to SD. Standard & Poor’s Credit Rating Service has also removed all these ratings from their CreditWatch list a month after they had been placed there with Negative rating outlook on July 3, 2009. ‘The Group supports Alfa-Bank Ukraine’s liquidity and market capitalization and has recently helped the bank to make an advance payment on their bond exchange deal. About a quarter of the bank’s liabilities is

Sverdlovsk Region division of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) looked into Bank24.ru’s alleged administrative offense case. The regional public prosecution authorities had investigated the bank’s advertising materials and papers earlier and placed their files with the division so that the latter might decide whether the bank’s loan ads violated the existing legislation. The division did declare Bank24.ru’s ads violated Article 28 (part 3) and Article 5 (part 7) of the Federal Advertising Act. For example, the bank’s Outstanding Loans advertisement did not provide any information as to

Yekaterinburg-based Koltsovo Airport Customs officers halted forty pieces of jewellery made of yellow and white gold at the customs frontier green light corridor early this month. The jewellery was carried by an Armenian citizen who arrived in Yekaterinburg on a flight from Yerevan. The experts came to the conclusion that the items’ total worth can be estimated at about 2.5 million RUR. Some of the gold pieces have large-size diamonds on them. The customs’ investigative department instituted a criminal lawsuit against the unfortunate smuggler, with charges based on Article 188 (part 1) of the

‘Our sales have been plummeting since this May, with an average drop of 50% and the main reason for this being the continuing troubles involved in getting a car loan,’ ASMOTO SLAVIA car sales center Managing Director Dmitriy Usachev said to an UrBC reporter. ‘The problem is that the state subsidies scheme that helps to cover the loan interest rates is not very efficient at the moment. Of all Skoda makes, for example, only Fabia got on the program, whereas the rest of the models, even those within the required 600,000-ruble price range, still haven’t made it to the list. This is an obvious

GM-AvtoVAZ joint venture is not going to produce any Chevrolet Niva makes in August 2009, the enterprise’s press officer announced recently. ‘The assembly line has to be stopped because of our new working schedule. The workers will be compensated for the stoppage in accordance with the Russian Federation Labor Code, which means they will be getting two-thirds of their average monthly pay. As for the personnel involved in the planned jobs and managerial things, they will be paid by the hour,’ says the press officer. GM-AvtoVAZ is a JV manufacturing all-wheel drive Chevrolet Niva cars. Last

ChTPZ Group’s Chelyabinsk Tube Rolling Plant and Pervouralsk New Pipe Plant shipped 540,600 tons of tubular goods to their consumers in the first half of 2009, which was actually 38% less than the 867,800 tons delivered to them a year earlier. The company says the drops in sales have to do with a drastic fall in the demand on the domestic market (they key market, in fact). In fact, the home demand plummeted by 35% in the first half of the year compared with the six months of 2008.

The international rating agency decreased the metallurgical and mining giant Evraz Group SA’s long-term foreign currency Issuer Default Rating as well as its priority unsecured rating from BB to BB-. Fitch has also placed Mastercroft and Evraz Group SA’s long-term foreign currency IDRs and their priority unsecured ratings on the Rating Watch, with Negative Rating Outlook. Now Mastercroft, with most of its assets based in Russia, is Evraz’s key daughter enterprise. Both companies’ short-term IDRs have been affirmed at B. ‘The rating drop indicates that Fitch feels the steps Evraz management

MRSK Urala, the local electricity supplier, fulfilled successfully 4,190 agreements providing for new customers’ hookup to their electricity supply networks. All in all, the company got 1,928 new consumers in the first half of 2009. ‘Our newly subscribed consumers are largely those who signed agreements with us earlier on. Then, we received 7,591 new applications in the first six months of the year, which was 9.5% less than in the first half of 2008,’ the company reports. MRSK Urala’s experts report their customers’ characteristics have changed lately. For one, the total power volume they

Grinvill Management Company is to undergo bankruptcy proceedings, Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court ruled. The company applied for insolvency of its own accord on June 4, 2009. The same kind of petition was placed with the court by Oxana Yu. Kolmogorova on June 30, 2009. The company used to be putting up Grinvill cottage area within ten kilometers of Yekaterinburg, down Chelyabinsk motorway and nearby the settlement of Bolshoye Sedelnikovo. The customers could choose among six house layouts with area ranging between 227.43 and 487 square meters. The company’s bankruptcy application was

Starting August 3, 2009, Ural Airlines is going to offer its customers cheaper flight to Israel thanks to reduced fuel fees. This means the price of all the tickets for Tel Aviv-bound flights (regardless of the tariff scheme employed) will go down by ?110. Following the decrease in fuel fees, the cheapest tickets to Israel and back will be available for 22,013 RUR (including the airport and fuel charges). The carrier operates a direct flight to Tel Aviv each Wednesday, using an Airbus A 320. The plane leaves Yekaterinburg at 11:30 AM and arrives in Tel Aviv at 1:40 PM. The flight lasts five

URSA Bank’s extraordinary general meeting took place on July 30, 2009 and resulted in the election of a new Board of Directors. The new BOD actually became necessary due to bank’s merger with MDM-Bank. The new Board now comprises seven members altogether. ‘The new bank’s stockholders are rather diverse, which is good for the business’s dynamic long-term development. Today we elected the BOD consisting of renowned top class experts with enormous experience in the field of international financing and with great knowledge of the Russian banking sector. The bank’s shareholders and directors will

Sverdlovsk Region Railways (Russian Railways Public Company’s subsidiary) had to cut back on its investments program by 28% in 2009 compared with a year earlier, so now our investments only amount to 15.6 billion RUR,’ Head of Sverdlovsk Region Railways Vladimir Suprun announced at a press conference in Yekaterinburg. Suprun explained the decision had been taken because of the entire country’s general economic difficulties. Meanwhile, according to the official data available, the company’s investments plan provided for about 10 billion RUR worth of investments in 2007 and about 2.5 to 3

The Perm division of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) imposed a fine on LUKOIL-Permnefteprodukt for violating the antimonopoly legislation on the regional fuel market. The offense consisted in their maintaining monopolistic (sky-high) gasoline and diesel fuel prices. The fine amounted to 51,088,937 RUR. FAS’s regional commission declared on June 10, 2009 that LUKOIL-Permnefteprodukt, being dominant on Perm Territory’s retail gasoline and diesel fuel market, violated Article 1 (part 1) of the Federal Competition Protection Act by keeping the high prices on Ai-80, Ai-92, and Ai-95 gas

39,400 trucks were produced in Russian in January through June 2009, which was 72.5% less than in the first half of 2008. The plummeting output was typical of most Russian automobile manufacturers, the spokesperson for Russian Federation Ministry for Industry and Trade reports. For one, GAZ Automobile plant produced 16,500 cars in the first half of 2009, which was only about one-fifth of the output for a year earlier. KAMAZ’s output came to 10,800 automobiles, which fell short of the figures for January-June 2008 by 61.5%. URAL manufactured 3,100 automobiles, which amounted to slightly over

According to Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin’s order, most of the 2.7-billion-ruble subsidy allocated from the region’s budget to deal with some top priority issues will be directed to the social benefit programs. ‘Given the current tax revenues deficit, we must do our best to pay the public sector workers’ salaries and make all the social benefit payments. What is more, the Governor was able to find the means to do even more,’ Deputy Governor Evgeniy Redin said at a press conference. Redin also noted that not a single socially important construction project had been halted in the

Sverdlovsk Region division of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) declared that Delta Credit Commercial Bank violated Article 11 (part 3) of the Competition Protection Act. The regional division of the service was empowered to deal with the case by Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service, the spokesperson for the division reports. FAS’s Sverdlovsk Region division took legal action against Delta Credit Commercial Bank on April 7, 2009. The alleged offense consisted in the bank coordinating the activity of several lending institutions by developing the Delta Credit Mortgage Lending Standards

Koltsovo Airport of Yekaterinburg hosted an extraordinary meeting of airline and travel agencies representatives, customs and frontier forces officers, Rospotrebnadzor officials, and state authorities on the highly pathogenic ‘swine’ flu epidemic. All of Yekaterinburg and Sverdlovsk Region’s dwellers were advised to avoid traveling to countries like Great Britain, the United States, Turkey, Spain, and the Dominican Republic, where the virus is spreading at an alarmingly fast rate.