On October 4, 2007, Ural Airlines and Airbus S.A.S. signed an international agreement regarding the acquisition of new Airbus planes by the Russian carrier in the course of a solemn ceremony that took place in Sverdlovsk Region Government House. The Russian party’s signatory was Ural Airlines’ General Director Sergey Skuratov, the French party was represented by Airbus Vice President Sales in Eastern Europe and the C.I.S. Andreas Kramer. The preliminary acquisition agreement was signed in June 2007, yet the terms were only finalized on October 4, 2007. The contract provides for the delivery

Chelyabinsk Region’s best teachers received presidential grants on October 4, 2007. The grants were awarded to the worthiest teachers for the second time this fall, which is part of the state-funded National Education Project. 218 school workers living in the South Urals received 100,000 RUR each. The ceremony was attended by First Deputy Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Andrei Kosilov, who said that the regional education system was one of the best in Russia as well as internationally. This can be proved by the prestigious awards that local students win in international contests on regular

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of loans given by UralTransBank to state-run for-profit organizations for 91 to 180 days went down by 15% (from 10 million RUR to 8.5 million RUR) in January-September 2007.

SKB-Bank decided to celebrate the company’s birthday with a whole range of pleasant surprises for its customers. The bank’s anniversary at the beginning of November will probably be remembered for special offers on deposits, namely, increased interest rates. SKB-Bank’s customers could enjoy better deposit yields from mid-September if their money was in Gold Standard deposit, since the effective interest rate reached 14.37%. The interest on the World Standard deposit came to 13.8% on October 1, 2007. ‘Even though banks have been lowering their interest rates on deposits lately, SKB-Bank

VUZ Bank’s Board of Directors decided to dismiss former Deputy Chairman of the Supervisory Board Mikhail Frolov on October 4, 2007.

The Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development was among the thirty-five Russian banks with the low credit risk ratings ( ), Bankir.ru maintained after the agency’s analysts looked into these banks’ activity in September 2007. There are only three other Sverdlovsk Region-based banks on the list. Bankir.ru’s experts report that the bank’s resource base is fairly diverse, the risk of a sudden outflow of funds that could hurt the company is very low, and there is virtually no bad debt in terms of attracted resources that the bank has to worry about. Then, the Ural Bank for Reconstruction and

‘Reftinskaya power station’s malfunctioning power generating unit will only resume operating in March 2008,’ OGK-5 Investment Projects and Repairs Director Nikolai Gavlitin announced at a press conference on October 4, 2007. 'This has to do with the delivery of the needed equipment and with the delivery of a special transformer from Ukraine in particular. This piece of equipment is expected to arrive in late December, so we’ll probably manage to restore and reinstall the equipment by March 2008,’ he added. 'The company intends to spend around 1 billion RUR to have Reftinskaya power

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of loans given by UralFinance Bank to natural persons for 31 to 90 days went down by 100% (from 565,000 RUR to zero) in January-September 2007.

Russian Railways Public Company looked at its passenger turnover figures in January-September 2007. The company serviced 102,972,000 passengers in nine months of 2007, their press officer reports. Sverdlovsk Region Railways and Privolzhskaya Railways’ passenger turnover growth rates were the lowest in Russia, as they only amounted to 1.4%. At the same time, the passenger turnover of Krasnoyarsk Railways went up by 5.2% and that of Gorkovskaya Railways increased by 5.1% in January-September 2007.

According to the Central Bank of Russia, volume of loans given by AGROPROMBANK Credit to for-profit NGOs for 91 to 180 days went down by 19.69% (from 770.281 million RUR to 618.618 million RUR) in January-August 2007.

United Company RUSAL’s Press Service came up with the results of a survey conducted by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center. The survey aimed to find out Russian people’s attitude toward aluminum and to gauge their knowledge of the subject. ‘Aluminum is the most well-known metal in Russia, and the country’s industrial development as a whole is inherently connected with the development of aluminum industry in particular,’ the survey maintains. More than 55% of respondents living in different parts of Russia believe aluminum is Russia’s most popular metal, followed by gold and iron. 95%

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of loans given by Tagilbank to for-profit self-regulatory organizations for 31 to 90 days went down by 30.6% (from 26.25 million RUR to 18.21 million RUR) in January-September 2007.

According to Bankir.ru, thirty-five Russian banks (including one bank located in Chelyabinsk Region, three banks in Sverdlovsk Region, and three Tyumen Region-based banks) belong to the low credit-risk category. SKB-Bank was able to become one of the banks thus rated. Bankir.ru’s experts report that the bank’s resource base is fairly diverse both in ways of attracting finances and in terms of currencies; the resource cost meets the market standards, and the risk of a sudden outflow of funds that could hurt the company is very low. SKB-Bank is more likely to develop in a positive rather than

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of loans given by Uralprivatbank to natural persons for 31 to 90 days went down by 100% (from 750,000 RUR to zero) in January-August 2007.

'A certain degree of cooperation between banks and insurers is not illegal, yet there is a borderline that one has to be aware of. For one, collusions aimed at setting fixed prices are prohibited by the competition protection law,’ Deputy Head of Federal Antimonopoly Service in Sverdlovsk Region Sergey Volkov said to UrBC. Federal Antimonopoly Service in Sverdlovsk Region filed lawsuits against Severnaya Kazna and UralTransBank, claiming that these banks had made collusive agreements with the insurance companies in order to be able to impose higher-than-the-market-average insurance fees

The value of net assets of Energy – Mixed Investments (the unit investment trust) managed by Eurogreen Management Company Ltd. went down by 1.21% between September 28, 2007 and October 3, 2007. According to Eurogreen’s website, the company’s net assets decreased from 5,032,395.63 RUR on September 28, 2007 to 4,971,594.02 RUR on October 3, 2007.

Mergers and acquisitions are widely believed to be the principal ways for banks to grow stronger. As for Russia, for instance, M&A used to happen if an acquired bank failed or its owners no longer wished to be in the business. Nowadays, however, mergers and acquisitions are more far-sighted. The Russian banking community experienced its first M&A in 2004, and a great increase in the number of mergers and acquisitions followed in 2006. The market players are inclined to think that SibAcademBank’s merger with Uralvneshtorgbank that resulted in the emergence of URSA Bank (one of Russia’s

Uniastrum Bank’s Yekaterinburg branch stopped offering its customers dollar and Euro mortgages, the bank’s call center reports. This is believed to be a temporary decision, so mortgage loans given in foreign currency are likely to become available again in mid-October. The call center assistants were unable to comment on the reasons for adopting this new policy, though. Uniastrum Bank first announced it was going to stop dealing in mortgages on August 31, 2007. The bank’s representatives said then that they only meant the bank would take a little longer to process the loan applications they’d

On October 2-4, 2007 Yekaterinburg World Trade Center hosted a real estate exhibition that happens to be one of the Urals’ largest professional fairs. Olips presented its two business class apartment blocks: an 80,000-square-meter one called Sozvediye and an 17,714-square-meter one known as Parkoviy. 'We’ve come up with two interesting projects and we are positive that the visitors to the exhibition will think highly of them. Sozvezidye is a large project we are working on in Botanicheskiy district of Yekaterinburg; its location can be called perfect infrastructure-wise. There will soon

SKB-Bank introduced two new offices in Volgograd and Perm. These offices, known as Kachinskiy and Balatovskiy, can now be found at 169 G.K. Zhukov St. in Volgograd and at 30 Sovetskoy Armii St. in Perm, respectively. Both offices welcome individual customers from 9 AM to 7 PM on weekdays and from 9 AM to 4 PM on weekends. Legal entities are invited to come from 9 AM to 4 PM on weekdays, the bank’s press officer reports. Kachinskiy is SKB-Bank’s sixth office in Volgograd Region, so the locals can still use Volzhskiy, Promyshlenniy, Volgogradskiy, Krasnoarmeyskiy, and Krasnooktyabrskiy outlets.