The members of Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) Board of Directors decided to give up on their remuneration starting January 1, 2009. This decision will be valid through the entire term of their office. MMK’s BOD Chairman Viktor Rashnikov is reported to say that the decision stems from the need to cut down on the company’s expenses at the difficult time of the global financial and economic crisis. The executive explains that the BOD members showed a lot of understanding and gave up on their remuneration voluntarily. The company’s Board of Directors members are: MMK Management

SKB-Bank considered the recommendations issued by Financial Access (the company that supported the introduction of international business standards within SKB-Bank upon the request of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, one of SKB-Bank’s stockholders) and set up a special Internal Audit Department, the bank’s press officer reports. The introduction of the new subdivision is aimed at supporting the bank’s internal control development and improvement while the business keeps on expanding. The Department aims to assess the efficiency and the quality of the bank’s risk

Sverdlovsk Gubernskiy Bank’s Board of Directors suggested that Sergey Prygunov should become the bank’s Chairman of the Supervisory Board. At the moment, this candidate is the current Chairman’s first deputy and used to be SKB-Bank’s Deputy Chairman of the Supervisory Board for Retail Lending. ‘Sergey Prygunov is an experienced manager that proved highly efficient at running SKB-Bank’s key business segment. Now he is to implement the recovery plan Sinara Group came up with for Sverdlovsk Gubernskiy Bank’s troubled finances. This plan provides for a dramatic improvement of the bank’s financial

The Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development and Club 66 came up with a new co-branding VISA card project. The bank’s latest card edition combines trendy design with the whole range of discounts Club 66 offers to cardholders, the bank’s press officer reports. VISA UBRD-Club66 cardholders thus get entitled to modern and multifunctional banking service and can also enjoy the discounts in over 150 places in Yekaterinburg. What is more, this co-branding card also gives you an opportunity to take part in special offers and lotteries conducted by the members of Club 66. In case you have the

MSA a.s., the major Czech pipeline fittings manufacturer (part of Rimera, ChTPZ Group’s O&G maintenance division) has been given a certificate that proves the company’s products’ compliance with the Ukrainian standards. Getting the certificate means MSA a.s. is now allowed to supply its 100 mm to 1,400 mm globe valves capable of sustaining up to 25 megapascals for oil and gas pipelines. The certificate was issued by Ukraine’s State Committee for Technical Regulation and Consumer Policy. ‘Getting our produce certified in accordance with the Ukrainian requirements is a logical step on the

‘I am positive that, under the current economically unstable circumstances, quite a few Russian carriers are going to survive this winter. A lot of them might have to leave the market,’ Ural Airlines’ General Director Sergey Skuratov announced in the course of a recent press conference. ‘We are already getting proposals from some smaller market players who suggest we could merge. Then, we had a merger proposal from Aeroflot as well, but we backed out of this offer. I believe our company is strong enough to get through the crisis and remain an independent entity,’ Skuratov said.

Ural Airlines’ General Director Sergey Skuratov spoke about the carrier’s performance in 2008 and its plans for the coming year at a press conference aboard A 320 airplane that arrived at the company’s premises on December 12, 2008. This year, the airline has kept on implementing its long-term fleet replacement program. The company bought as many as four A 320 Airbus planes in 2008, so it is now the proud owner of six such planes altogether. ‘The airline’s fleet upgrading will carry on next year as well. We’ll be operating between ten and twelve A 320 aircraft by the end of 2009. Agreements

‘Bank Severnaya Kazna does not have and never had any credit cards,’ Alfa Bank’s Chairman Rushan Khvesyuk announced in the course of an online press conference today. ‘What the bank did have was the bank cards with an overdraft limit; these were no credit cards, in fact. Now, however, any customer can get Alfa Bank’s full-fledged credit cards at the bank,’ he added. Nevertheless, the Chairman’s statements contradict Bank Severnaya Kazna’s official data. The latter announced the launch of its credit card lending program as early as 2004. The classic credit cards and credit cards with a grace

URSA Bank’s Personal Finance University welcomes all the ‘golden age’ retirees interested in enhancing their financial literacy. The lectures and seminars will be given on the premises of Veterans’ Councils, universities and Retirement Fund’s departments in the Ural and Siberian cities on December 15-23, 2008. In the course of their lectures, the bank’s experts are to tell the attendees about the current state of the country’s banking system, clever savings management, handling money orders, and using bank cards. URSA Bank has been offering its Personal Finance University workshop to the

‘Over 100 tons of Irish pork poisoned with dioxin happened to be delivered into various Russian regions. Yekaterinburg received the lion’s share of this meat, that is, 98 tons. Russia was one of the countries to get the greatest amounts of poisoned pork,’ says head Gennady Onischenko, head of Rospotrebnadzor (the state consumer rights watchdog). Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) reported on December 6, 2008 that their lab tests of feeding stuff and lard samples carried out on September 1, 2008 revealed enormous dioxin content in both. The amount of poison in the samples exceeded the

Probusinessbank’s extraordinary general meeting resulted in the decision to approve of the subordinate loan the bank might take from East Capital Financials Fund AB. The loan would amount to 624.89 million RUR that the bank will have to pay back over a five-year period alongside with the 12% annual interest rate. According to the terms of the transaction, the subordinate loan agreement can be converted in registered common stock at a price of 2,145 RUR per share, should the creditor want this. The creditor is allowed to apply for the conversion within three years of signing the loan

SKB-Bank looked into its business performance as of December 1, 2008. The bank’s net assets went up by 10.8 billion RUR over the year and reached more than 39.3 billion RUR. This is 37.5% better than the figures achieved on December 1, 2007. Then, the bank was able to raise the amount of attracted investments by nearly one third, so these came to 33 billion RUR, including over 12 billion RUR of private individuals’ investments as of December 1, 2008. SKB-Bank’s loan portfolio increased by more than 40% and amounted to over 27.5 billion RUR. The bank’s own funds reached over 7 billion RUR,

‘All the unhealthy panic around the bank deposits in Sverdlovsk Regions has finally cooled down. People are no longer desperate to get their cash back immediately. The banks that used to have a hard time cashing their customers’ deposits have by now managed to solve their liquidity problems, and people even started opening more deposits now,’ says Pavel Efremov, Advisor to the Chairman of Bank Monetniy Dom (Mechel-Bank). For one, the amount of foreign currency deposits opened in November 2008 exceeded that for October 2008 by 22.9%, whereas the amount of foreign currency deposits opened in

Following the order of Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin, 520 million RUR were allocated from the region’s budget to pay the end-of-year bonus to the public sector workers. The spokesperson for the Governor reports 79 million RUR has been directed to the regional organizations’ workers, while the remaining 441 million RUR will be used to pay municipal employees. The money has therefore been distributed among the region’s towns and districts, and the Finance Ministry has by now fully completed transferring the necessary subsidies into the municipal budgets. Before New Year’s Day, all

‘People still need to securely invest their savings somehow, so many of them head for reliable banks that offer a nice interest rate on deposits. As for the banks, each one has its own strategy, behavior, and pricing policies,’ URSA Bank’s Vice President Alexei Sannikov announced in the course of a round table discussion on the so-called Precious Depositor in Yekaterinburg. The agenda of the discussion largely dealt with one big question: will the banking community manage to retain its private customers’ trust? ‘When working with customers, depositors in particular, the banks act in much the

LSR Ural Management Company decided that Yekaterinburg-based NOVA-Group should no longer exist as an independent entity after merging with the company. Prior to the merger, LSR Ural Management Company owned 100% of NOVA-Group’s authorized capital.

Bank Severnaya Kazna reduced the interest rates offered on its Gold Staircase and Rentier deposits on December 15, 2008, the bank’s official website reports.

URSA Bank retired its 1.5-billion-ruble second bond issue on December 12, 2008. The bank also paid 28.425 million RUR worth of profits, since the annual interest rate was declared at 7.6%, or 18.95 RUR per bond. The bank went through with the bond issue on December 16, 2005; the bonds were to be in circulation for three years. The transaction was coordinated by Dresdner Bank.

Elena Malakhova (31) was appointed CEO of UniCreditBank’s Yekaterinburg subsidiary. The spokesperson for the bank reports Ms Malakhova used to be the counselor of the subsidiary’s director for economic issues and its retail sales director prior to this promotion. The bank states the new executive graduated from Moscow State Pedagogical University with honors in 1999. Her majors were Physics and Philology.

The Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development has recently been declared Sverdlovsk Region’s most lucrative bank. According to RBC.Rating’s list of banks that proved most profitable and effective in January-September 2009, the Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development was Russia’s 49th largest bank and the region’s No.1 in terms of profits. The bank’s balance sheet profit rose by 25% over a year and reached 724.3 million RUR on October 1, 2008, the bank’s press officer reports. The business’s great profitability proves that the bank manages to keep up with the rapid development,