Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin discussed the ways of increasing security of the future underground with the local anti-terrorist committee. The General Director of ChelyabMetroStroy Konstantin Abramchuk said as soon as the construction of the subway began in 2000, they made every effort to ensure its anti-terrorist safety. At the moment, there are two ways of protecting the subway and its future users: keeping an eye on the construction site by ChelyabMetroStroy’s security service (with four CCTV cameras, weekly raids and checks, and entry passes) and making sure the

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court held a preliminary hearing of the claim laid by Bank Severnaya Kazna’s minority shareholder Oksana Shishkina against Bank Severnaya Kazna and Alfa-Bank. The plaintiff insisted on Alfa-Bank making Bank Severnaya Kazna go through with the public buy-out offer. In the end, the court proceedings were postponed until May 14, 2009. Shishkina feels Alfa-Bank must buy her 1,276,500 shares at the highest price offered to the other stockholders. According to the plaintiff’s claim, Bank Severnaya Kazna must call a BOD meeting and make its recommendations to the

Public Services & Utilities Support Fund, the state corporation, canceled the general agreement they had with Khanty-Mansiyskiy Bank regarding the bank deposits, the spokesperson for the fund reports. The decision was taken because of Standard & Poor's demoting the bank’s credit rating down to В+ on April 21, 2009. Now this rating does not meet the criteria the Russian banks have to meet in order to be allowed to accept the fund’s reserves in the form of deposits.

SMU Uralmash’s Board of Directors decided in the course of their recent meeting that the stockholders should be advised to pass the dividend for 2008. The stockholders themselves are to gather at the annual general meeting on June 25, 2009. The other points on the agenda have to do with electing the new BOD and approving of the annual report.

The 20,000 employees of Uralvagonzavod who have been made redundant recently are to increase the number of Nizhniy Tagil’s unemployed to 30,000 people. The enterprise’s GD Oleg Sienko signed the decree making 20,000 workers temporarily redundant for the period of May 4-29, 2009. In the meantime, the local unemployment figures are still on the rise: prior to these layoffs, there were 10,479 jobless in the city, which comes to 5.1% of the working age population.

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin directed an additional 26 million RUR to compensating the expenses of public transport entities (which have offered a 50% fare discount to pensioners traveling to the countryside by bus). According to the spokesperson for the Governor, the money is to be distributed among the transport organizations of the region’s cities and towns to make sure the retirees can enjoy the discount on May 1, 2009-October 15, 2009. 4 million RUR was allotted to the city of Chelyabinsk for this purpose in May, so the compensation comes to 30 million RUR altogether, 20

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court is going to look into the claim laid by Bank Severnaya Kazna minority shareholder Oksana Shishkina against Bank Severnaya Kazna and Alfa-Bank regarding Alfa-Bank’s obligation to launch a public buy-out offer on Bank Severnaya Kazna shares. Shishkina believes Alfa-Bank must buy her shareholding (1,276,500 shares) at the highest price offered to the other stockholders. She insists on Bank Severnaya Kazna calling up a BOD meeting to make sure the BOD recommends this to the shareholders. The plaintiff also insists on having 85.021% of the bank’s registered

Yekaterinburg’s Kirovskiy district’s investigative authorities instituted criminal proceedings (with charges based on Article 146 (part 2) of the Russian Federation Criminal Code, that is, violation of author’s rights) against a local dweller. The case has been placed with the court, the spokesperson for the authorities report. The inquiry team believes the thirty-seven-year-old owner of an apartment in Mamin-Sibiryak St. was using the pirated Russian versions of Microsoft Windows Professional SP3, Microsoft Office 2007, and other software programs copyrighted by Microsoft. The total damage

Following the order issued by the head of Rostourism Anatoly Yarochkin, over 655 tour operators have been excluded from the federal register after they failed to provide any data on their financial guarantees for the new term, the spokesperson for Roustourism (the federal tourist agency) reports. There is a number of Yekaterinburg-based companies on this list: Inturline-99, TBK Inturline, Ural Tourist Company, Mega Tour, Orange Tour, Orange Tour Region, Finnex-tour, Mir-Voyage, Cleo Tur, Alexandria, Piligrim, Reise, Inform-Tour, Southern Cross-Yekaterinburg, Soglasiye-Ek, Kurortniy Mir,

The revenues of VIZ-Stal dropped by 73.42% in the first quarter of 2009 compared with the last one of 2008; at the same time, the company’s gross profit went down by 71.86%, its sales revenues by 75.77%, and its net profit by 74.56%. Such are the results of Novolipetsk Iron & Steel Works (NLMK) daughter enterprise’s performance in January-March 2009. NLMK’s press officer reports the problems have to do with the plummeting demand for VIZ-Stal’s products. ‘The global demand for transformer steel decreased at the beginning of the year because of the economic crisis and the customers’

METCOMBANK’s latest EGM resulted in the decision to go through with an additional share issue in 2009. This is expected to raise the bank’s authorized capital by 2 billion RUR; with the issue’s total volume coming to 4 billion RUR. The spokesperson for the bank reports METCOMBANK will thus be able to reach the scale of Russia’s Top 50 banks in terms of capital volume (and in terms of asset volume, potentially). The increase in capital will also widen the bank’s business development and lending opportunities.

It was detected in the course of an inspection carried out by Nizhniy Tagil environmental prosecution authorities that two local enterprises kept polluting the environment and had no discharge permits at that. Ruslich, an iron foundry based in Verkhnyaya Salda has got over ninety harmful emission points, while Uralskoye (dealing in building stone production) has got thirty-three such emission points and discharged over 40 tons of air pollutants in 2008. The General Prosecutor’s Office reports Ruslich’s chief engineer and Uralskoye’s environmental expert will have to face lawsuits, with

VUZ-Bank’s BOD meeting on May 4, 2009 resulted in the decision to suggest that the stockholders pass the dividend for 2008 at the upcoming AGM. The acquired revenues are expected to be directed to the capital investment and reserve funds.

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin chaired the regional anti-drug committee meeting. This was attended by the members of the State Boundary Commission (headed by the head of the Federal Drug Control Service Vladimir Kalanda). Kalanda said the main aim of their coming to the region was to look into the regional anti-drug committees’ performance as well as to propose a set of specific measures to make their job more efficient. The spokesperson for the Governor reports the region is home to a major drug trafficking artery starting in Afghanistan and gets some inflow of drugs from Troitsk,

Uralkhimmash BOD suggested that the stockholders should pass the common registered stock and preferred type A stock dividend for 2008 in the course of an AGM. The meeting itself took place on April 30, 2009.

The net loss of Pipe Metallurgical Company (TMK) rose by 2,431,390,000 RUR, or 32.7% in the first quarter of 2009, the company’s press officer reports. The company’s net loss amounted to 9.877 billion RUR (in accordance with the Russian Accounting Standards) in January-March 2009 compared with 7.445 billion RUR in October-December 2008. A year earlier, however, TMK’s net loss came to 2.841 million RUR. The company’s press service explains their loss figures in the first quarter of 2009 have to do with the re-assessment of their foreign currency liabilities.

MRSK Urala finished off the first quarter of 2009 with 389.948 million RUR worth of losses, which caused the company’s net profit to go down by 1,251,300 RUR, or 145.3% (from 861.352 million RUR in the last quarter of 2008). The interregional network company reports the poor financial performance has been brought about by the need to create the 586-million-ruble bad debt reserve to make up for the overdue bad debts unsecured by any collateral or guarantee.

Bank Severnaya Kazna’s former top managers are apparently accusing the bank’s former BOD Chairman Vladimir Frolov of destroying the business. At least, that is what Leonid Bratsev, Valery Malkov, Sergey Kuroptev, and Evgeniy Parfenov said to a Delovoy Kvartal interviewer. The managers claimed the bank never needed any financial recovery at all and was quite capable of coping with the difficult circumstances on its own. The only reason Bank Severnaya Kazna was sold to Alfa-Bank was the decision taken by the BOD Chairman and majority stockholder Vladimir Frolov, they feel. The former bank

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin signed a provision regarding the prevention of АН1N1 flu outbreak in the region. The list of measures is to be drawn up by his deputies Andrei Kosilov and Evgeniy Redin, who will lead an ad hoc team consisting of Health Minister Viktor Shepelev, Minister for Agriculture Ivan Feklin, Minister for Radiation and Environmental Safety Gennady Podtesov, head of Rospotrebnadzor’s Chelyabinsk Region division Anatoly Semenov, head of Rosselkhoznadzor’s Chelyabinsk Region division Sergey Naumov, and heads of some other ministries and departments. This team is

Vladimir Baltin has been appointed the Director of URSA Bank’s Chelyabinsk branch after being approved of by the Central Bank of Russia’s local division, the bank’s press officer reports. ‘Vladimir Baltin was born on November 18, 1970 in Izhevsk, the Republic of Udmurtia. He graduated from Izhevsk Mechanical Institute with a major in instrument making in 1993. In 1998, he got his degree in Finances and Lending at Izhevsk State Technical University. Between 1993 and 2007, Baltin was employed in various capacities ranging from an economist to a deputy branch CEO at Udmurtinveststroybank,