Bank Severnaya Kazna’s annual general meeting in Yekaterinburg resulted in the decision to pass the dividend for 2008. Last year’s 1,573,449,450.3 RUR worth of losses will be offset with the help of undistributed profits and share premium. In the course of the AGM, the stockholders also elected the five BOD members, rejecting, however, the bank’s former Chairman of the Supervisory Board Sergey Kuroptev (who did not get a single vote). Sergey Kuroptev happens to be one Bank Severnaya Kazna’s former top managers who placed a claim against the bank with Yekaterinburg’s Kirovskiy District court,

Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) bought a 99.99% shareholding in ZAO Profit, Russia’s largest scrape metal recycler. The transaction has already been approved by MMK Board of Directors. The acquired assets comprise Profit proper and a number of its daughter enterprises dealing in scrap metal recycling as well. Historically, Profit had always fully met MMK’s scrap metal needs. For one, three-quarters of 5 million tons of scrap metal used by MMK in 2008 were actually supplied by Profit. Profit’s financial performance is now to be presented in MMK Group’s consolidated reports drawn up

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin met the heads of the region’s sports federations: Deputy Governor and President of Chelyabinsk Region Olympic Boxing Federation Evgeniy Redin, Minister for Physical Education, Sports, and Tourism Yuri Stepkin, Vice President of the All-Russian Athletics Association Georgiy Necheukhin, and Vice President of the regional judo association Dmitriy Khudyakov. The spokesperson for the Governor reports the meeting was dedicated to issues related to amateur and professional sports development in the region. The Governor said Yuri Stepkin and the other

Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) won in the Best Exporter of 2008 contest organized by the Russian Federation Ministry for Industry and Trade in order to support the local exporters. In the course of the contest, the country’s best industrial exporters were chosen in seventeen categories such as the Best Exporter to the CIS, the Most Dynamically Developing Exporter, and so on. The applications and the supporting documents were considered by the Ministry’s Foreign Economic Relations Department. MMK won the contest as Russia’s Best Exporter to the CIS among the metallurgical

‘I feel focusing on hotel construction is more reasonable just now than concentrating on housing. The thing is, the hotel estate market is doing better at the moment than the housing one, even though things are not at all splendid there,’ Accord Invest’s Ural branch’s Director Konstantin Selyanin said to an UrBC reporter. Meanwhile, Mayak Corporation has recently announced that they were leaving the housing market for the hotel one. ‘Housing estate that used to be Mayak and many other builders’ main source of income is now in grave trouble, largely because the supply does not correspond with

Starting July 1, 2009, Bank Severnaya Kazna (the asset of Alfa-Bank) is going to use some special protective commissions. For instance, they will take a monthly commission of 100 RUR/?3/$3 for managing their ACCORD accounts; the commission will be taken out on the last day of each month, in the currency identical to that of the account (provided there is some money in it). Then, there will be a commission for topping up one’s account at the bank’s cash desks, if this is the VISA Electron Instant Issue card account created to pay off the bank’s ruble loans. The only exception to this rule is

Bank Severnaya Kazna (Alfa-Bank’s asset) is going to introduce a new policy on private customers on July 1, 2009. For one, the bank will no longer render any services related to opening fixed term or demand deposits, creating a customer’s electronic signature, and issuing additional MasterCard or Visa cards for existing customers (except for Visa Instant Issue, however).

Customers might find themselves unable to use some of Alfa-Bank’s Yekaterinburg-based offices on June 11-18, 2009. According to the bank’s official website, this has to do with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in the city that week, with limitations also imposed on automobile and pedestrian travel. This is why Alfa-Bank suggests that their customers have all the transactions done at their outlets at 42 Malyshev St., 17 Gorki St., and 3 Khimikov Lane carried out in advance.

Sky Express, a low-cost airline, flew 217,661 passengers in the four months of 2009, which is 16% less than in the first four months of 2008, the carrier’s press officer reports. ‘Now that the whole Russian air industry is going trough some trouble, Sky Express’s main challenge is to keep up with last year’s passenger turnover figures and the number of operated flights,’ says the company’s General Director Marina Bukalova. In fact, the airline’s passenger turnover amounted to 305,457,726 passenger-kilometers in January-April 2009, which falls short of last year’s figures by 17.5%. In the

The amount of steel produced by Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) since the day of the launch has recently exceeded 700 million tons. The enterprise produced its first batch of steel on July 8, 1933 using the plant’s No.1 Martin furnace. In 1936, a large Martin furnace shop with a dozen 150-ton furnaces was completed, whereas fifty years later, the enterprise had as many as three such shops with thirty-five furnaces altogether. MMK then used to produce up to 16 million tons of steel a year. In addition, an oxygen converter shop was launched in 1990, to become the world’s most

‘Instead of the five new automobile showrooms we had been planning on, only three of them will get commissioned in Yekaterinburg this year. This has to do with the current economic difficulties in the country,’ the Commodities Market Committee’s expert Galina Kosareva said to an UrBC reporter. ‘For one, the construction of GAZ-Center’s showroom in Scherbakov St. had to be stopped. In fact, this car factory had been unable to produce any new cars until they got a government loan. Whether this loan is going to change things for the better remains yet to be seen,’ she explained. The showroom was

Pnevmostroymashina’s stockholders agreed in the course of the annual general meeting that they should pass the dividend for 2008. Besides, the profit for the previous year is to remain undistributed because of the business’s losses. In addition, the stockholders approved of the company’s annual report for 2008 and elected the BOD members.

‘Things look very complicated and unclear at Uralvagonzavod. What is happening there now looks strikingly similar to what Kakha Bendukidze did at Uralmashzavod, and this turned out to be a recipe for disaster,’ Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Eduard Rossel said at a recent press conference in Yekaterinburg. In fact, Uralvagonzavod’s GD Nikolai Malykh was fired and Gazkomerz BOD Chairman Oleg Sienko was chosen to succeed him in April 2008. ‘Plenipotentiary Representative of Russian Federation President in Ural Federal District Nikolai Vinnichenko and I have come to an agreement. I do want the

The Central Bank of Russia reports volume of loans offered by VUZ Bank to sole traders for 91 days to 180 days had plummeted by 100% (from 1.6 million RUR to zero) by April 1, 2009.

JP Morgan Chase Bank decreased its holding of Uralsvyazinform’s shares from 5.08% down to 1.83% Uralsvyazinform, one of the Urals’ major telecommunications provider, is unable to comment on the reasons for the bank’s decision just yet.

URSA Bank’s BOD Chairman and MDM-Bank’s Chairman of the Supervisory Board Igor Kim attended a meeting organized by President Dmitriy Medvedev to celebrate the Entrepreneur’s Day, URSA Bank’s press officer reports. Russia’s thirty leading businesspeople visited the executive mansion in Barvikha altogether, BOD Chairman of Kuzbassrazrezugol Coal Company Andrei Bokarev, BOD Chairman of Troika Dialog Group Ruben Vardanyan, BOD Chairman of Kaskol Management Company Sergey Nedoroslev, and President of Svyaznoy Group Maxim Nogotkov among them. Dmitriy Medvedev congratulated his guests on their

According to the Central Bank of Russia, volume of loans given by Perviy Respublikanskiy Bank to its customers despite overdraft had dropped by 100% (from 1.741 million RUR to zero) by April 1, 2009.

The famous supermarket chain is having its purchase system restructured, focusing on Russian goods in the country’s provinces, Auchan Russia’s Management Director announced at the State Duma Committee for Economic Policies and Entrepreneurship meeting recently. ‘80% of goods displayed on our shelves is actually produced in Russia. We are willing and ready to build up on our cooperation with the local manufacturers, because our customers’ choices are very important to us. The customers prefer locally made goods, and we are happy to give them a chance to buy those at Auchan. However, it’s

Life Banking Group is about to launch a new audacious advertising campaign in Yekaterinburg and Chelyabinsk. The start has been scheduled for June 2009, when twenty billboards are to appear in the cities’ major districts. The campaign’s piece de resistance is a sharp change in the ads’ content within two weeks of the launch. The campaign is estimated to cost 250,000 RUR in Yekaterinburg alone. The event is expected to target the potential private and business customers of Life Group’s Bank 24.ru’s new image. Admen believe the idea of carrying out a shocking advertising campaign during the off

The Central Bank of Russia reports volume of loans offered by UralTransBank to sole traders for 31 days to 90 days had gone down by 10.62% (from 167.658 million RUR to 149.842 million RUR) by April 1, 2009.