Sverdlovsk Region Minister for Natural Resources Konstantin Kryuchkov chaired a meeting of the regional Environment and Nature Management Committee on March 12, 2009. The primary topic on the meeting’s agenda had to do with the local enterprises having to drop their emission rates down to the maximum permissible discharge limits this year. The regional government declared on March 18, 2005 that sixteen local companies based in environmentally challenged areas had to fit themselves into the limits by 2015. So far, several enterprises have actually managed to reach these limits by January 1,

FINAM Investment Company lowered its estimates of Uralkaliy common stock’s target price from $5.4 to $5.02 by the end of 2009. The company still suggests that it will be a good idea to keep buying these shares, the spokesperson for the investment company says. FINAM’s analysts believe that Uralkaliy’s production and financial development indicators will be going down this year, partially due to the re-investigation of the causes of the accident in Berezniki in 2006. This re-investigation could actually do a lot of financial damage to the fertilizers manufacturer. ‘The global financial crisis

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin allocated 30 million RUR to set up a small business lending support fund. Another 80 million RUR have been provided by the federal budget, so the fund’s resources total to 110 million RUR altogether. According to the spokesperson for the Governor, the fund’s primary function is to act as a guarantor for small businesses borrowing money from a bank. In addition, preferential lending terms are offered to entrepreneurs by the fund itself. What is more, the fund is trying to negotiate for lower interest rates on bank loans provided the fund acts as a

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin signed a decree providing administrative support to the local investment projects. The document is aimed at creating an investment-conducive environment in the region and making it easier for businesses to operate. Under the new decree, the potential investors will be able to have the whole issue settled at just one place, while applications for setting up a business are to be considered by the Ministry for Economic Development. The only papers an investor has to submit are a feasibility study, some financial reports, and evidence of paid taxes. The

Bank24.ru’s official website states that the bank’s former BOD Chairman Boris Dyakonov is now employed in the capacity of Deputy Chair of the Supervisory Board. In the meantime, the Board of Directors is now headed by a Life Group representative Yaroslav Alekseev. Even though the bank only reported the news to the public on March 13, 2009, the changes themselves took place as early as the end of February. One could assume that the news was placed on the bank’s official website following the media inquires as to what position Boris Dyakonov was holding at the moment.

Ural Airlines is going to re-launch its Israel-bound flights on March 25, 2009. ‘We’ve had to cancel this destination for two months, but now that the passengers’ safety can no longer be questioned, the flight is on our schedule again. This is one of our oldest international flights, actually: we keep operating flights to Israel for over a decade now,’ says the airline’s Commercial Director Kirill Skuratov. The departure and arrival times have remained the same: the flight is operated every Wednesday using an A 320 airplane. The plane leaves Yekaterinburg at 11.30 AM and arrives in Tel Aviv

The Department of Internal Affairs Ural Federal District’s division officers suppressed a crime group whose members are believed to have stolen 6.3 million RUR from Perviy Respublikanskiy Bank and some 16 million RUR from Koltso Urala Bank. The officers of the Yekaterinburg-based division initiated a number of criminal lawsuits on March 11, 2009, with charges based on Article 4 of the Russian Federation Criminal Code (large-scale fraud by an organized crime group). Their investigation revealed that a number of people had been using the names of companies like Konservant, Uralprodukt, and

‘The decision to close down Euroset-Boutique in Krasnoarmeyskaya St. in Yekaterinburg was taken as early as December 2008. What we are mostly interested in is the economic expediency of running every single outlet, and in this store’s case, we were hoping to reduce our outgoings through lowering the sky-high rent. We’ve tried negotiating with the landlords a number of times, but, alas, to no avail,’ Euroset Ural branch CEO Kirill Shabanov said to an UrBC reporter. ‘We are planning to reopen our luxury boutique very soon; this is actually a matter of two to three months’ time. But the boutique

‘The first court hearing of the claim laid by the workers of Krasnaya Shapochka mine against UC RUSAL’s Severouralsk bauxite mine (SUBR) took place on March 12, 2009. The hearing of one particular case (A.V. Novoselov vs. SUBR) was put off until the following day, with another one (N.V. Pidenko vs. SUBR) was scheduled for March 16-17, 2009,’ SUBR independent trade union’s head Valeriy Zolotarev said to UrBC. ‘Following a miners’ strike last year, two of the workers were taken off the job on the basis of a medical checkup results. Now the workers actually contest the conclusion these doctors

Head of Russian Government Vladimir Putin signed a decree giving Chelyabinsk Region’s oncologic clinic the status of a district medical center, Deputy Governor Evgeniy Redin informed Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin. The center therefore became the only one with such a status among eleven clinic located in different Russian constituencies. Another ten oncologic dispensaries are going to become regional medical centers. As a matter of fact, Chelyabinsk Region was involved in the program targeted at decreasing cancer-related mortality rate as early as last year. Now that the local

The Deputy Head of Rostechnadzor’s Ural Federal District division Alexander Kravchenko made a report on the all-round inspections of the local mining enterprises. This came to forty-two checks throughout 2008 altogether. All in all, the most noticeable trend was that the mining equipment tended to wear out faster than the companies were able to have it replaced or upgraded. Then, a lot of accidents and emergencies appeared to be caused by the workers’ lack of qualification and discipline. ‘Unfortunately, the economic crisis that broke out in October and November has led to a production

The Central Bank of Russia reports the volume of loans given by Uralfinprombank to non-state for-profit organizations for up to 30 days had dropped by 46.67% (from 111.581 million RUR to 59.5 million RUR) by February 1, 2009.

‘The economic crisis has left VIZ-Stal (as well as most metallurgical enterprises) with the plummeting demand for its produce. The drop was particularly felt in the first quarter of the year,’ says the company’s Deputy GD Sergey Makurov. ‘Our action plan provides for decreasing all the non-manufacturing costs and making our production process more efficient. Then, we are still trying to reach the optimal staff balance (as we have been doing since 2007, in fact). This actually means 2,271 to 2,200 people will probably have been made redundant by July 1, 2009. No more workers will be fired

The total volume of bank cards issued by URSA Bank in 2008 rose by 76% in comparison with a year earlier and amounted to over 1.9 million items. These figures include 695,263 international Visa and MasterCard ones (whose total amount thus comes to 1,110,734 cards); in fact, URSA Bank’s acquiring turnover reached $1.9bn last year. In addition to this, the bank issued 134,528 Zolotaya Korona cards in 2008, so the total amount of these now comes to 809,218 units. The acquiring turnover involving this type of cards reached $837m. Apart from ongoing cards launch, URSA Bank kept improving on the

Boris Dyakonov is no longer going to serve as Bank24.ru’s Chairman; he is to be succeeded by Yaroslav Alexeev of Life Group. The news has been disseminated via the bank’s official website. Still, Boris Dyakonov is going to remain the BOD member, even though he is now not on the bank’s Supervisory Board.

‘The bad debt problem is the most common one for a bank during an economic meltdown. It’s true that the amount of overdue debt on loan payments only tends to increase lately, and I think this is only the beginning,’ Home Credit & Finance Bank CEO Ivan Svitek announced at the press conference on the introduction of the bank’s Yekaterinburg branch. ‘We keep working on the cushion mechanics, so to say; for one, we’ve grown pickier in terms of whom to give money to. The borrowers who find themselves unable to pay the loan off are offered debt restructuring (if we can be positive that they

‘The international hauls are not very popular at the moment. The number of flights operated to the hot countries like Egypt and Thailand and to Europe kept going down in January and February 2009. Thus, the number of flights bound for Hurghada, Sharm El Sheikh, Bangkok, Dubai, Prague, Frankfurt, Vienna, and Budapest dropped by 7.6%, 19.3%, 30.1%, 33.8%, 17%, 19.4%, 32.1%, and 7.1%, respectively,’ Yekaterinburg-based Koltsovo Airport’s press officer said to an UrBC reporter. The only exception to this rule is destinations to Tianjin, China and Goa, India: the number of flights operated to

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court keeps looking into the claim laid by A.K. Serov Metallurgical Plant against Severskiy Pipe Works regarding the recovery of 266,871,317.54 RUR. The preliminary court session took place on December 26, 2008. The plaintiff placed the claim with the regional Arbitration Court in order to make the defendant pay the above-mentioned sum. The figures are made up of 263,785,358.48 RUR worth of the price the defendant allegedly failed to pay for the goods delivered in accordance with the agreement 734/2331 as of November 19, 2007 and 3,085,959.06 RUR worth of

‘A number of luxury brands are expected to leave the local market in the near future. In most cases, this has to do with the companies failing to invest cleverly or to assess the brand’s potential adequately prior to the market launch. Besides, there’s the problem of receivables and the loan pressure. To make matters worse, not a single Russian group is interested in buying a luxury project and developing it at the moment, since the local luxury market cannot appeal to the major players right now,’ says Anna Kochneva of Vindex Group (the representative of Givenchy, Gianfranco Ferre,

‘The article called AVS Group Builds on Wings that one of the newspapers carried recently is not quite accurate. It’s not true that AVS Group now owns a 53% shareholding in Ural Civil Aviation Plant, in spite of what the Group’s press officer was reported as saying. We have no idea of how the Group could possibly acquire the shareholding. The plant’s management was shown some papers which absolutely do not prove that the Group has any property rights over the shareholding whatsoever,’ says the plant’s Commercial Director’s Assistant Alexander Plotnikov. In the meantime, AVS Group’s PR