The state of events at Yekaterinburg Meatpacking Plant Ltd. puts its creditors in trying circumstances as neither the structure nor the management of the company have been determined and agreed upon. Nobody knows how the new team of executives will handle the company’s assets and liabilities, either – and the company’s official debt might come to more than 200m RUR. Financial market experts, however, believe the real indebtedness might amount to more than all of the company’s assets are worth. Among the plant’s creditors are some federal and regional organizations that now have certain

‘This year, the Federal Financial Market Service in the Ural Federal District has tried a few working methods and introduced some new ways of doing things. The financial market of Yekaterinburg tends to get fewer securities and more capitalization of companies recently,’ Vladimir Krysov, Head of the Federal Financial Market Service in the Ural Federal District, announced at the press conference devoted to the results of their activity in 2006. ‘Over the nine months of 2006, we have looked at 2,156 quarterly financial reports (compared with 2,812 reports in January-September 2005), registered

As the PR Director of regional internal affairs administration Valeriy Gorelykh said to UrBC representative, Sverdlovsk Region Investigative Administration has recently placed a criminal case with them that involves fraud and organized crime. There are 17 accused and 729 victims, and the damage is estimated at 100m RUR. According to the inquiry officers, the accused would invite people to the so-called informative seminars and tried to convince their victims that only the members of their fund would ever be successful. Then they took a 45,000-RUR to 60,000-RUR membership fee and provided the

KH Steel of Cyprus (one of the major shareholders and a subsidiary of Evraz Group) sold its .9301% share holding (1,091,978 shares); the amount of transaction comes to $80.358661m, reports Finam.ru. Evraz Group offered a 8.3% share holding worth $422m (29.1m GDR worth $14.5 each) at London Stock Exchange at the beginning of June 2005. Deutsche Bank and Renaissance Capital offered a 6% holding of Evraz Group shares at the end of January 2006 (the amount of the transaction came to $389m). Prior to this, 91.7% of Evraz Group shares used to belong to Crosland Global Ltd.Alexander Abramov had

The opening ceremony of the visa section of the German Consulate in Yekaterinburg has been scheduled for January 22, 2007, Tilo Klinner, Consul-General, said in the course of the Ural Press Club meeting. ‘As they have started the construction of the new building for the consulate only recently, it will have been finished in three years’ time, so the visa section will be located on the 7th floor of Atrium Palace Hotel for the time being,’ the Consul said. The section was supposed to have opened before the end of 2006; the consulate has been using the office in Atrium Palace Hotel for quite a

SKB-Bank located the holder of their 300,000th VISA-SKB card: this was Alexei Strinadkin, a tube-rolling shop worker of Taganrog Metallurgical Plant. The holder was awarded this special card in the course of a solemn ceremony in the bank’s office in Taganrog. Oleg Semityaga, the director of the office, also gave Mr Strinadkin a TVset. The bank issued its 200,000th VISA card as recently as 11 months ago, which means it’s managed to increase the number of its cards by over one-third in less than a year, reports the press officer for SKB-Bank.

‘Given the experience of other Russian airports, the decision of Koltsovo Airport management to stop reconstruction due to lack of money is not very justified. The airport executives say that they ran out of money after they had been made to reduce their fuel prices. Yet a project as large as this cannot be financed through just one source of income: it is too costly to be covered by fuel prices alone. Domodedovo and Sheremetyevo airports, for example, have successfully attracted some investments in the past,’ Deputy GD for External Relations of Ural Airlines Alexei Fomin said to UrBC

‘Today, the merger of large banks is normally followed by a re-branding campaign. VTB, for one, is a striking example of large-scale re-branding brought about by some external rather than internal factors. One should bear in mind that a re-branding campaign will always be successful as long as it is launched properly,’ says Viktor Nemikhin, the executive of BrokerCreditService Company Ltd. ‘However, the success of such campaigns can also depend on the bank’s marketing policy. Coming up with the image and the slogan alone is not enough; the bank’s name must be made simple and recognizable. VTB

Uralvneshtorgbank was awarded for competing the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development Trade Financing Program. The bank joined the program in October 2005, upon receiving a $7m line of credit. The excellent performance of the bank’s trade financing experts and its impressive transaction portfolio made Uralvneshtorgbank Russia’s leading regional crediting organization. It was supported by some large foreign investors such as ACE Global Markets (AGM), Catlin Syndicate 2003, XL Syndicate 1209, and Kiln Syndicate 510 at Lloyd’s of London, therefore the European Bank for Reconstruction

‘HydroSpetsStroy Ltd. (the general contractor of Noviy Grad, the local builder) has so far refused to meet the demands of Sverdlovsk Region Court of Arbitration, that is, to produce the documents about the company’s financial and economic state. This is why the officers of justice are going to visit their premises and look into the matter,’ the company’s trustee in bankruptcy Olga Rushitskaya said to UrBC representative. ‘Within five months of external management, nothing whatsoever has changed about the situation in HydroSpetsStroy, since the builder never got in touch with me in any way,’

The Municipal Duma of Yekaterinburg adopted the budget for 2007 after the first reading. The budgetary profits are expected to come to 13.451bn RUR, of which 3.686bn should be received from the federal and regional budget. The expenses will probably come to 14.753bn RUR, including 5.775bn RUR to be invested in education, 2.303bn RUR to be spent on the housing and communal facilities, and 2.284bn RUR should be invested in medicine. The budget deficit will thus come to 1.301bn RUR. The budget was drawn up considering the average growth of heating, electricity, and other tariffs by 9.9% and a

Sverdlvosk Gubernskiy Bank started accepting Union Card payments for mobile service and satellite televison on December 8, 2006. The payments can be made in Yekaterinburg, Asbest, Nizhniy Tagil, and Sukhoi Log. The Union Card holders living in these towns can now make payments to MTS, Beeline, MegaFon, BaikalWestCom, Motive, Tele2-Russia, Skylink, and NTV-Plus. The bank will start dealing with payments to MegaFon Ural, Utel, and some other companies in the near future.

‘Today, the merger of large banks is normally followed by a re-branding campaign. VTB, for one, is a striking example of large-scale re-branding brought about by some external rather than internal factors. One should bear in mind that a re-branding campaign will always be successful as long as it is launched properly,’ says Viktor Nemikhin, the executive of BrokerCreditService Company Ltd. ‘However, the success of such campaigns can also depend on the bank’s marketing policy. Coming up with the image and the slogan alone is not enough; the bank’s name must be made simple and recognizable. VTB

Yekaterinburg Consumer Rights Committee got three claims against Yugoria Insurance Company in eleven months of 2006. This comes to approximately 6% of the total number of claims laid against insurance companies, the spokesperson for the committee said to UrBC representative. This authority received 54 complaints in January-November 2006, the main cause usually being the insurer’s refusal to pay the whole awarded compensation sum or not paying the insured in full.

‘HydroSpetsStroy Ltd. (the general contractor of Noviy Grad, the local builder) has so far refused to meet the demands of Sverdlovsk Region Court of Arbitration, that is, to produce the documents about the company’s financial and economic state. This is why the officers of justice are going to visit their premises and look into the matter,’ the company’s trustee in bankruptcy Olga Rushitskaya said to UrBC representative. ‘Within five months of external management, nothing whatsoever has changed about the situation in HydroSpetsStroy, since the builder never got in touch with me in any way,’

‘We still haven’t been able to open the winter season because of the warm weather. Our ski-tracks have 10 to 15 centimeters of loose snow, and what we need is 40 to 50 centimeters that will pack down to 10-15 centimeters. We haven’t got any snow-producing equipment: when the resort was set up in 1999, there was plenty of snow and no one actually thought we might need extra facilities to cover our tracks with snow. In this kind of weather, though, even having the equipment wouldn’t make a lot of difference, it just doesn’t work if the temperature is anything above zero. The special

Metallurgical Industrial Complex of Nizhniy Tagil conducted the first Managing Director School workshop for 14 young employees. The Complex experts designed this project for middle-level managers under 35 who could thus get the best managerial skills and qualifications in the course of an intensive training program. For two days, the workshop participants had to learn the basics of teamwork as well as absorb the information during the mini-lectures and look at the issues connected with effective team performance. They also did special tests and exercises to determine the range of team player

On December 5, 2006, the average price of one square meter of existing homes in the center of Yekaterinburg (i.e. in Moskovskaya St., Chelyuskintsy St., Vostochnaya St., Dekabristy St., Belinskiy St., and Bolshakov St.) rose by 4.8% compared with November 14, 2006, reports the Analytical Department of the Ural Chamber of Real Estate. The prices rose by 3.3% in Yekaterinburg’s most expensive residential area (Avtovokzal, Yugo-Zapadniy, Parkoviy, Botanicheskiy, Vtuzgorodok, Shartashskiy, ZhBI – downtown and the south-west and the south-east of the city), by 4.8% in the city’s second most

‘The structure of ingoing and outgoing calls traffic of MegaFon hasn’t changed after the federal bill made all the ingoing calls free on July 1, 2006. This means that the predicted post-CPP (calling party pays) traffic imbalance has been avoided,’ MegaFon Deputy GD Alexei Nechiporenko announced at the press conference. ‘The ingoing calls traffic, however, went up 3% (from 6% to 9%). The prime cost of entering our mobile network now comes to 1.10 RUR to 1.60 RUR per minute depending on the region,’ Mr Nechiporenko said. ‘In the meantime, MegaFon has been negotiating with other mobile operators

Uralvneshtorgbank was awarded for competing the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development Trade Financing Program. The bank joined the program in October 2005, upon receiving a $7m line of credit. The excellent performance of the bank’s trade financing experts and its impressive transaction portfolio made Uralvneshtorgbank Russia’s leading regional crediting organization. It was supported by some large foreign investors such as ACE Global Markets (AGM), Catlin Syndicate 2003, XL Syndicate 1209, and Kiln Syndicate 510 at Lloyd’s of London, therefore the European Bank for Reconstruction