‘Our shareholders see Metcombank as a niche business that will develop dynamically in four main directions, aspiring to become the regional leader and possibly the country-wide leader as well in each of them. Two of these direction have to do with our retail services, one of them is related to services we render to businesses, and the last one is connected with a number of certain investment projects,’ Metcombank’s Chairman of the Supervisory Board Rustam Mamatov said to UrBC. ‘The niche bank status presupposes working with some rather broad categories of customers with special needs. Once we

281.1 million RUR worth of excise duty payments was directed to Sverdlovsk Region’s budget in January-May 2008. This sum comprises all kinds of excise taxes, including the profits that result from those kinds of excise duty payments that are to be distributed among the Russian Federation constituent entities’ budgets, the spokesperson for the regional division of the Federal Tax Service reports. The better part of the payments is reported to come from alcohol and beer excise duty payments; their shares in the total volume of payments come to 49.9% and 49.1%, respectively.

‘Since the beginning of the summer season, the fuel fees have gone up by 30% to 50% on average, depending on the carrier one chooses,’ Palma Tours Travel Company’s Marketing Director Denis Chesnokov said to UrBC. ‘Turkey, Egypt, and the Russian coast of the Black Sea are the most popular destinations in August as usual. As a matter of fact, when the end-of-the-summer vacation season begins, trips grow a bit more expensive compared to the beginning of the season,’ he added

Bank Uralsib closed down one of its oldest Yekaterinburg-based offices: the bank’s division located in Atrium Palace Hotel (one of the city’s most prestigious business centers at 44 Kuibyshev St.) no longer operates due to the expiry of the bank’s lease agreement. The spokesperson for Atrium Palace Hotel reports the agreement is not going to be renewed, whereas the office will be offered to another company. As for Uralsib’s office, it can now be found at 28 Radischev St. This area is less close to the center of the city and is believed to be considerably less attractive for banking business,

Sverdlovsk Region’s total payment turnover (the sum of cash flow and non-cash operations) went up by 40.2% in the first quarter of 2008 compared with the first quarter of 2007. The region’s non-cash payments turnover (the sum of turnovers related to debiting and crediting customers’ accounts in the Bank of Russia and other banks, including the intra-bank settlement systems in rubles and foreign currency, and the bank of Russia’s subdivisions’ payment transactions) went up by 34.2%, Sverdlovsk Region’s division of the Bank of Russia reports. The increase in the region’s payment turnover can be

Russian Vice Premier Alexander Zhukov and Minister for Regional Development Dmitriy Kozak chaired a videoconference where acting Head of Sverdlovsk Region Government Anatoly Gredin made his report. The meeting was devoted to the strategic problems of large-scale housing construction in Russia. Alexander Zhukov said the days of sporadic housing construction were gone and insisted on switching to multi-faceted area development where housing construction was necessarily accompanied by the introduction of modern engineering and social infrastructures. In this connection, the issue of supporting

Fewer people tend to choose Park House Trade and Entertainment Center for shopping lately; besides, a whole range of the mall’s tenants report their sales have gone down, says Park House’s Commercial Director Nadezhda Reshetnikova. The executive believes this is a seasonal trend; some experts, however, feel there may be another reason for a decrease in the number of visitors: Grossmart hypermarket that used to be hosted by Park House has recently closed down. ‘The dropping number of shoppers and the less impressive sales figures for certain kinds of products both have to do with the summer

Interfax-CEA’s analysts came up with a report on the Russian bank’s performance in the second quarter of 2008. The Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development was once again declared the Urals’ No.1 in terms of asset volume and profitability. In addition, the bank was given the 60th position in the country-wide rating of banks’ net assets. The bank’s net assets amounted to 47.643 billion RUR in the second quarter of 2008, which exceeded the figures for the previous quarter by 25%. Besides, the Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development was rated 58th on Russia’s Top 100 Banks list.

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of loans given by UralTransBank to state-run for-profit organizations for 91 to 180 days dropped by 78% (from 30 million RUR to 6.6 million RUR) in January-July 2008.

‘Some beer manufacturers have to provide themselves with their own resource base (which generally means barley),’ FINAM Management Company’s analyst Maxim Klyagin announced in the course of a recent press conference. ‘In 2007, for instance, the main reason for Baltika beer becoming a less profitable product to deal in was the growing costs of buying substantially more expensive raw materials and having them transported,’ he said.

Olips, the local developer, organized a celebration for children in Dirigible mall in Yekaterinburg. The event took place on the eve of August 2, the Builder’s Day, and included contests with tokens given away as prizes. These tokens could be exchanged for popcorn and candy floss. In addition, some extra prizes were given to the most active contest participants. ‘Builder’s Day is a very large-scale holiday, so we just wanted to share it with everyone, and I believe we succeeded in this,’ says Olips’s Deputy GD Evgeniy Melnikov. Olips is currently implementing a few real estate development

Interfax-CEA reports SKB-Bank was promoted in Russia’s Top 100 Banks rating (based on the volume of banks’ assets) in the first half of 2008. The banks’ rating was compiled by the agency’s experts on the basis of data available as of July 1, 2008. SKB-Bank was given the 74th position in the rating compared to the 67th position a year earlier. The bank managed to raise its net assets by 51% over one year, so these now come to 35.772 billion RUR. 1,000 banks aspired to be featured in Interfax-CEA’s rating as of July 1, 2008 altogether.

Sverdlovsk Region directed 7,028,800,000 RUR worth of uniform social tax payments to the federal budget in January-May 2008, the spokesperson for the regional division of the Federal Tax Service reports. This exceeded the figures for January-May 2007 by 133.3%

‘The project on multi-faceted development of Sverdlovsk Region’s territories was drawn up a long time ago. We’ve already placed it with the executive authorities and are now working on its implementation,’ says Sverdlovsk Region Duma deputy Nail Shaimardanov. The Russian Government stated recently that the federation’s constituent entities with special long-term multi-faceted area development programs were going to receive some substantial funding from the federal authorities meant for putting up engineering and social infrastructures. Apart from such projects, the region must deal in some

Noviy Grad still hasn’t been able to finish the construction of an apartment block at 72 Khokhryakov St. in Yekaterinburg. The building was actually supposed to have been completed and commissioned in the year 2000, or nearly eight years ago. The first half of the year 2008 is over, but the building is still under construction; to make matters worse, both the building and the builder have been involved in a number of unpleasant clashes and scandals. For one, the local law-enforcement agencies are currently investigating the overselling of apartments in the future dwelling that was apparently

‘According to our estimates, Sodeystviye consumer cooperative’s target audience largely consists of socially vulnerable local strata, mostly pensioners and the working class. The cooperative’s customers have already become proverbial for their low financial literacy. The thing is, the average interest rate most Russian banks offer on their deposits comes to no more than 12% a year, while the maximum interest that Sodeystviye promises is 28% a year. Given today’s lack of stability on the stock market, this kind of profitability is impossible to achieve even for unit investment trusts that are

Sverdlovsk Region’s division of Federal Antimonopoly Service took legal action against Bank Uralsib, accusing the company of violating the federal advertising legislation, the spokesperson for the Service reports. Bank Uralsib’s advertisement on their consumer loans with a mortgage was reported to lack some essential data on the product and the terms of buying or using this loan type. There was no information about the incidental commission for providing a customer with the loan prior to having the mortgaged property officially registered by the state. Nothing was said about the insurance

Russian Railways Public Company violates the existing labor code in terms of regulations related to paying for working overtime, Russian Trade Union of Railway Engine Crews’ website states. ‘According to the Article 11 of Russian Federation Labor Code, the rules apply to all kinds of employers regardless of form of ownership. Russian Railways Public Company’s employees must be paid 1.5 times more for every extra hour of work, while Article 152 of Russian Federation Labor Code states that these sums apply to the first two hours of overtime, while all the other hours must get a double pay. At

SKB-Bank was given the top position in BankInformService Information Agency’s rating of the banks’ activity as of August 5, 2008. The experts who worked on the rating report they used the data available for eight categories, including the banks’ activity on the spot currency market, their most popular card, deposit, and loan type, the banks’ PR Departments’ performance, and so on. The general score is determined by the average score in each category valid throughout the current week. The rating gets re-assessed on a daily basis, with over sixty banks based in the mid-Urals featured in the

Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) keeps working on its investment project in Saint Petersburg: the building of a maintenance metal goods center will have been completed by the end of the year, while the delivery and assembling of all the necessary equipment has been scheduled for the beginning of 2009, the company’s PR Department reports. Four major bits of machinery are to be supplied by FIMI, the Italian firm: three crosscutting units, one of them fitted with the flattening and multi-tasking processing options, and a longitudinal cutting unit. This equipment will enable the workers