The license of Uveren.ru Insurance Company (the asset of Bank24.ru) has recently been halted, PRIME TASS Insurance refers to the Federal Insurance Surveillance Service as reporting. The decision was taken by the Service after the company had failed to fulfill its orders. The decree to this extent was signed and came into force. In fact, the provision on license sanctions states that companies with temporarily invalid licenses have thirty days to eliminate the existing legal violations. The insurer’s official website says the company was founded by Bank24.ru, with its 4.99% shareholding,

Bashkirskaya Med (part of UMMC’s primary resource base) underwent the certification audit procedure: the company’s environmental management system was tested for compliance with ISO 14001:2004 international standards, while its labor and occupational safety management system was tested for compliance with OHSAS 18001:2007 requirements. The certification procedure was carried out by the experts from Saint Petersburg-based Russkiy Registr-Baltiyskaya Inspektsiya Certification Association. Bashkirskaya Med is expected to receive the certificates of compliance in August 2009; the papers will be

AKB Probusinessbank (Life Group) shareholders decided in the course of their extraordinary general meeting to pass the share dividend for 2008. The share profit (471,890,529.3 RUR) is expected to be used to cover up the bank’s losses. The stockholders also decided to get rid of the bank’s economic development and promotion funds. In addition, the bank’s new Board of Directors (consisting of nine members) was elected at the meeting.

URSA Bank and MDM-Bank united to take part in an auction where bidders competed for the available reserves of the Communal Housing Services Support Fund that could be placed onto their deposits. Both banks won the auction and signed the transactions providing for deposition of the resources within the set limits. The auction was coordinated by Saint Petersburg Currency Exchange, the spokesperson for URSA Bank reports. ‘This is the first time we’ve united with MDM-Bank for a bid, that is, we negotiated over the terms, the rates, and the tariffs. This successful cooperation experience has laid

Sverdlovsk Region’s division of the Federal Antimonopoly Service keeps looking into the claim laid by Sverdlovenergosbyt against MRSK Urala. The court’s meeting on June 17, 2009 resulted in the decision to postpone the hearing of case 35 related to MRSK Urala being accused of violating the law on the protection of competition (Article 10 (part 1) of the Federal Bill 135 enacted on July 26, 2006). The company had allegedly tried to impose on Sverdlovenergosbyt disadvantageous terms on the electricity supply agreement, the spokesperson for Sverdlovsk Region’s division of the Federal

‘Aviaprad has been going through the bankruptcy proceedings for a year now, but the company’s assets still haven’t been sold. The only things we did manage to sell were the furniture, office appliances and such like items. For one, we found it really hard to sell the spare parts for aircraft. Because of these difficulties, we undertook to apply to Arbitration Court for having the bankruptcy proceedings prolonged for another six months. The court is quite likely to consent, because there is no other way out,’ Aviaprad’s trustee in bankruptcy Olga Ruschitskaya said to an UrBC representative.

The Russian Federation Federal Antimonopoly Service approved of TM TRAST’s petition to buy 41% of Khanty-Mansiyskiy Bank’s shares, the Service reports. Prior to this, the Service approved of the petition placed by Standart, the Saint Petersburg-based investment company, and Roman Kichinov (Assistant to the bank’s President and head of the bank’s press service) then said to RIA Novosti that the Federal Antimonopoly Service’s decision did not mean the shares would be sold directly rather than by auction. The applications could be placed with the Service after Khanty-Mansiyskiy Autonomous

Chelyabinsk Region is going through a hard time at the moment, so the experienced managers’ expertise would come in very handy in the problem-solving process, Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin said at an administrative reserve meeting recently. This reserve comprises 2,405 people aspiring for leading positions in the federal and local governments and ministries. Sumin said both the region and the country’s governments were rather interested in learning what kinds of people were employed in various branches of economy and how efficiently they could deal with the existing problems. ‘It

Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) had its environmental management system evaluated in terms of functionality in the first quarter of 2009. The enterprise’s environmental management system has been certified for compliance with the ISO 14001: 2004 international standards, so the analysis was targeted at finding ways of improving upon the system and making it more environmentally efficient. In the first quarter of the year, MMK actually happened to discharge more pollutants in the air than a year earlier, supposedly because of the growing agglomerate, coke, iron, and steel outputs:

Over 230 crimes related to production, storage, transportation, or sales of unsafe goods and services (Article 238 of the Russian Federation Criminal Code) were detected in Sverdlovsk Region in January-May 2009, Ural Federal District’s division of the General Prosecutor’s Office reports. For one, Yekaterinburg’s Verkh-Isetskiy district’s investigative authorities instituted a criminal lawsuit related to sales of overdue and therefore unsafe Heinz baby food. The respective documents have been placed with the court. It was revealed in the course of the inquiry that the manager of the baby food

Ural Airlines is to start operating a new Yekaterinburg-Moscow flight on June 26, 2009. The plane lands in Sheremetyevo International Airport. The flights will be operated on Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, and Sundays. The departure and arrival time for U6-466 (Yekaterinburg-Moscow/Sheremetyevo) flight is 9:30 PM and 10:10 PM, respectively. The departure and arrival time for U6-465 (Moscow/Sheremetyevo-Yekaterinburg) flight is 11:30 PM and 3:40 AM, respectively. The new flight is expected to make the transit passenger’s connections in Moscow more convenient, the airline reports. ‘Ural

One of the Urals’ oldest consumer electronics chain stores might close down before the end of 2009. UralBusinessConsulting Agency of Information and Analytics found out that Uralskiy Val chain store might soon go out of business in accordance with the owners’ decisions. The possible liquidation could be caused by a dramatic drop in consumer electronics and home appliances sales, which, in its turn, was brought about by the global financial crisis. With the competition going up and the solvent demand going down, the Ural company finds itself unable to compete with the federal chains. The

‘If we do decide to set up a basket of currencies or a supranational currency at some point, I don’t think it would be a bad idea. However, it’s too early to speak of such projects yet. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization member states’ economies are very different just now; besides, a supranational currency is only useful when the countries are intensely involved in mutual investment and trade. We haven’t reached this cooperation level with all of the member states yet,’ Assistant to the Russian Federation President Arkadiy Dvorkovitch said at a briefing during the Shanghai Cooperation

‘SUAL Kremniy Ural has had a production stoppage because of the plummeting demand for its produce. This has to do with the general economic downfall that hit the silica-consuming steel-smelting and cast iron industries worst. Selling our goods is therefore virtually impossible at the moment. The company currently employs 122 people, but we are forced to make 85 people redundant soon. The remaining 37 employees will be enough to handle the current shipment volumes,’ UC RUSAL’s press officer for Ural Federal District Roman Lukichev said to UrBC. ‘The enterprise produced about 24,000 tons of

President of the Russian Federation Dmitriy Medvedev arrived in Yekaterinburg to take part in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and BRIC summits on June 15-16, 2009. The presidential plane was greeted by Plenipotentiary Representative of Russian Federation President in Ural Federal District Nikolai Vinnichenko and Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Eduard Rossel. The leaders of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization member states (Russia, Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan) and observing states (India, Iran, Mongolia, and Pakistan) are planning to discuss the

The shareholders of Uralsvyazinform (the Urals’ major telecommunications provider) elected their new Board of Directors in the course of the annual general meeting in Perm. According to Uralsvyazinform’s report, only eleven out of twenty-four proposed BOD members were actually voted for. These were: Evgeniy Yurchenko, Alla Grigorieva, Eduard Lebedev, Mikhail Batmanov, Olga Koroleva, Elena Umnova, Mikhail Leschenko, Alexander Provorotov, Sergey Kerber, Dmitriy Tushnov, and Anatoly Ufimkin.

Nizhneserginskiy metal goods plant’s shareholders decided at their annual general meeting to pass the dividend for 2008 and to leave the undistributed profit within the company, the enterprise’s press officer reports. In the course of the meeting, the shareholders also approved of the plant’s annual report for 2008, of the annual accounting report, and of their profit and loss statement for last financial year. What is more, the new BOD was elected, consisting of V. Vorotnikov, E. Ovcharov, O. Shargunova, V. Shevelev, and S. Chebotarev.

Most of Evraz Group’s members went through their greatest output downfalls (down to 50% in some cases) in the last quarter of 2008, with figures gradually rising in the first quarter of 2009, the holding’s Vice President Dmitriy Sotnikov said at a meeting with Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Eduard Rossel. The holding now employs 2,000 fewer people compared with last fall, with 500 more employees soon to be made redundant at Vysokogorskiy Ore Mining and Processing Enterprise (VGOK). The Governor said, however, that such redundancies were unacceptable. VGOK is just breaking even at the moment,

Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Eduard Rossel met up with the General Director of Uralvagonzavod Oleg Sienko, head of the Governor’s Administration Alexander Levin, and Head of Sverdlovsk Region Government Viktor Koksharov. The Governor criticized bitterly the industrial giant’s new management team’s policies in the course of his last press conference. Rossel said Oleg Sienko’s mode of administrative behavior was very similar to that of Uralmashzavod’s former owner Kakha Bendukidze (who had nearly brought the enterprise to its knees). During the meeting, Oleg Sienko explained they’d only

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court started looking into one of the many claims laid by Bank Severnaya Kazna against Mayak Corporation and Uralinvesttsentr Ltd regarding the 71,221,989.04-ruble debt. The plaintiff also insists on having the defendant’s mortgaged property arrested. The preliminary hearing of the case was scheduled for June 11, 2009. As a matter of fact, Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court is to handle several lawsuits instituted by the bank against Mayak Corporation, with claims totaling to about 1 billion RUR.