‘Sadly, we haven’t’ heard from Nikolai Kretov for quite a while now. Early in May, we were informed that the land allotment he’d received to put up an exhibition center was transferred to another company. The thing is, however, that this new company belongs to Kretov as well, which probably means that the man declared one of his businesses insolvent and transferred the allotment to his other company,’ Mayor of Yekaterinburg Arkadiy Chernetskiy said at Sverdlovsk Region’s Construction Committee. The land allotment in question was given to Leader Holding Company, run by Nikolai Kretov.

The Board of Directors of West Siberian Metallurgical Industrial Complex (Evraz Group member) suggested that the enterprise’s shareholders choose to pass the dividend for 2008 at the upcoming AGM. Similar recommendations were given to stockholders by the BODs of Evraz Group’s Vanadium and Vysokogorskiy ore mining and processing enterprises, both of which are located in Sverdlovsk Region.

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court is going to consider the insolvency claims put forward by Leader Holding Company on May 26, 2009. The company placed its insolvency application with the court on April 28, 2009, so the court decided to institute legal proceedings to see how justified the company’s claims are. Prior to today’s hearing, the debtor must produce the accounting balance sheet for the last quarter (with the tax inspectorate officer’s approval), come up with the proof of getting loans, and produce evidence of having or not having assets as well as a number of other papers.

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court is to consider the claim laid by Bank Severnaya Kazna against Mayak Corporation and Uralinvesttsentr on June 18, 2009. The plaintiff insists on the defendants paying the bank 183,048,144.65 RUR and on having their mortgaged property collected, the court’s press officer said to an UrBC reporter. The preliminary hearing took place on May 25, 2009. President of Mayak Corporation Marina Konkova declared earlier that the company was trying to get their loan debts restructured by the bank. ‘It turned out very difficult to get our payments prolonged and refinanced

Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) presented it Mill 5000 potential at The Urals’ Industry, the first industrial exhibition in Tyumen. This exhibition was part of the project on the industrial development of the Urals’ north (known as The Industrial Urals-The Polar Urals Corporation). Chelyabinsk Region (which owns a shareholding in the corporation) presented over fifteen regional enterprises at the exhibition, including MMK. MMK’s PR Department reports the company’s stand displayed the capabilities of their future hot-roll Mill 5000 meant for manufacturing plate iron, with width

‘UC RUSAL’s Bogoslovskiy smelter carried out a detailed investigation of why the River Turiya, Sverdlovsk Region, had turned red. It was detected that the area around the company’s slurry pipeline got contaminated because the pipeline had leaked. So some of the slurry was washed down into the river with melt-water, coloring it red,’ the smelter reports. This means UC RUSAL’s enterprise actually admitted that their equipment did have some faults and deficiencies, whereas they had claimed earlier that the company had nothing to do with the contamination of the river. The local public

Kommersant-Dengi has recently compiled a list of Russia’s thirty banks most affected by the crisis, with Probusinessbank declared one of the country’s most unprofitable banks. The bank in question (which actually undertook the financial recovery of Yekaterinburg-based and infamously unprofitable Bank24.ru last year) was given the 13th position in the rating. Probusinessbnak’s losses amounted to 310.272 million RUR, the magazine reports.

According to Kommersant-Dengi, Bank Severnaya Kazna and Bank24.ru were on the list of Russia’s thirty most unprofitable banks as of April 1, 2009. Bank Severnaya Kazna (the asset of Alfa-Bank) was given the third position in the rating, with losses coming to 2,813,969,000 RUR, while Bank 24.ru (owned by Life Group) was given the 14th position in the rating, with losses reaching 289.657 million RUR.

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court is to hold the preliminary hearing of the claim laid by Bank Severnaya Kazna against Mayak Corporation and Uralinvesttsentr on May 25, 2009. The plaintiff insists on the defendants paying the bank 183,048,144.65 RUR and on having their mortgaged property collected. President of Mayak Corporation Marina Konkova declared earlier that the company was trying to get their loan debts restructured by the bank. ‘It turned out very difficult to get our payments prolonged and refinanced for a longer period of time, despite our being the bank’s major customer and the

MRSK Urala decreased its electricity supply by 16.8% in the first quarter of 2009 compared with a year earlier, the company’s quarterly financial and performance report states. The useful electrical supply came to 17882.6 million kilowatt-hours, which falls short of the figures for a year earlier by 18.1%. At the same time, 2166.6 million kilowatt-hours worth of electricity was lost.

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin intends to personally investigate the situation with the profit taxes paid earlier by the local enterprises that are to be paid back to them, he announced at an administrative meeting on May 25, 2009. According to the spokesperson for the Governor, the sum due to be paid back to businesses comes to more than eight billion rubles at the moment, including 1.07 billion RUR paid back in December 2008 and over 4 billion RUR paid back since the beginning of the year. At the same time, the regional budget’s profits dropped by 45% in the first quarter of 2009

‘The only reason we gave up on the idea of buying Bank Severnaya Kazna was that we had a certain upper price limit that we couldn’t afford to break during the negotiations. In fact, we did state this exact reason to the bank’s stockholders as soon as the talks were over,’ the spokesperson for AFK Sistema Yulia Belous said to an UrBC reporter. As it happens, the acquisition of Bank Severnaya Kazna by AFK Sistema (which was willing to handle the bank’s financial recovery) was cancelled at the last minute. The bank’s former BOD Chairman Vladimir Frolov later hinted at Sistema’s dubious paying

‘The economic crisis has made Auchan reconsider its plans to put up a number of new hypermarkets. They were going to build one in each of Yekaterinburg’s districts at first, but now they will only be able to set up two hypermarkets within a course of two to three years,’ says Deputy Mayor of Yekaterinburg Viktor Konteev’s press secretary Ilona Starodubtseva. ‘They are currently finalizing the details of the land allotment purchases. The new stores are to be located on the way out of town and will operate in much the same format as the existing ones,’ she explained.

Concern Kalina’s net profit (calculated in accordance with the International Accounting Standards) went down by 34.3% in the first quarter of 2009 compared with a year earlier and reached 139.4 million RUR, the spokesperson for the company reports. The cosmetics manufacturer’s revenues amounted to 3.6 billion RUR and its gross profit to 1.91 billion RUR over the same period of time. EBITDA rose by 17.3% and came to 471.88 million RUR. Besides, the changing lending practices and the devaluation of the ruble against the U.S. dollar and the Euro in the second half of 2008 and the early months of

URSA Bank made ?14m worth of coupon payments on its LPN bonds coupons. The coupon yield was determined at 7% a year, the bank’s press officer reports. Ireland-based URSA Finance Plc went through with its ?400m Eurobonds issue on May 21, 2007. The issue was also coordinated by ABN Amro and Deutsche Bank. The bonds are to be in circulation for three years. According to URSA Bank, there are currently ?202.17m worth of this issue’s bonds on the market.

Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) developed its environmental program for 2009. MMK comes up with such a program on a yearly basis in order to decrease its negative impact on the environment and to make sure they keep to the norms of air and water emissions and industrial waste limits. ‘Some of our most important tasks include putting up a dust exhausting unit for our Mill 5000 that will trap at least 900 tons of dust a year. In addition, some gas-purification units will be installed at our CC machine department. All in all, we plan to spend 300 million RUR on air-friendly innovations

‘Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) produced about 1.1 million tons of metal goods at the beginning of 2008, whereas at the moment, the figure comes to 600,000 tons, or about 60% of the earlier outputs. Unfortunately, there is little or no purchasing power on the home market right now; moreover, we have to export at prices below the prime cost. Nevertheless, we did manage to break even in March 2009. We put a lot of effort into decreasing the prime cost, so now MMK is gradually starting to make a profit again,’ MMK BOD Chairman Viktor Rashnikov said at a press conference following the

‘It’s hard to speak about this or that company’s competitive advantages just now, because all businesses are going through hard times at the moment. Nevertheless, this crisis is bound to end sooner or later, and then, I am positive that MMK is going to have a great advantage over its rivals,’ British Petroleum’s Vice President for Russia and Kazakhstan and Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) BOD member Peter Charow announced at a press conference dedicated to the enterprise’s annual general meeting. ‘First of all, MMK is conveniently located in the Urals, where most of the demand for

The stockholders of Nizhniy Tagil boiler plant decided in the course of the annual general meeting to pass the dividend for 2008. At the same time, each BOD members is to get the monthly remuneration of 30,000 RUR and is going to get all the job-related expenses covered (provided all the financial proofs are submitted properly).

The net profit of Ural Railway Machine-Building Plant went down by 128.464 million RUR, or 12.898% in the first quarter of 2009 (from 996,000 RUR worth of net profit in the last quarter of 2008 to 127.468 RUR worth of net loss in the first quarter of 2009). The plant reports the decrease in profits has to do with increased non-sales expenses, that is, growing U.S. dollar exchange rate.