‘Sales of AutoVAZ-produced cars went down by 30% compared with last year,’ reports the press officer for the Sales Department of Ural Cars motor show. AutoVAZ dealers currently have over 70,000 cars waiting to be sold, which is twice the number of the average monthly figure. ‘It really is true that there are too many AutoVAZ-produced cars at the moment, and the demand for them is going down, as it has been throughout the whole year,’ says the press officer. Ural Cars believe the main reason for the decline in demand for Russian cars is the relative cheapness of the foreign ones.

SibAcademBank won the National Banking Prize as the Most Dynamically Developing Bank. The prize was instituted by the Association of Russian Banks and the National Banking Journal. The National Banking Prize is the first all-Russian award in the field of banking; it was awarded for the second time this year, with the ceremony taking place in the Russian Federation President Administration Reception Palace on November 30, 2006. The news was reported by the spokesperson for Uralvneshtorgbank.

‘The amount of money an organization can give to a bank solely depends on how much it believes in the bank’s strategy and potential. In case of Uralvneshtorgbank, this confidence is obviously very strong,’ the Assets Management Director of Unicom Partner Investment and Finance Company Vitaliy Kalugin said to UrBC representative relating to two subordinate loans recently obtained by Uralvneshtorgbank. The bank received $20m from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, with credit payments to be made for the next seven or up to nine years, and $10m from the International Finance

‘Building companies are not among the enterprises that use the voluntary medical insurance service widely. Covering your workers’ medical insurance is a normal practice in all large companies, yet the local builders, whose employees actually work in the environment that is detrimental enough and often have health problems as a result, almost never insure their workers. Covering the insurance of the management is the most they can do,’ Boris Velegzheninov, Director of Belaya Bashnya Zdorovyie, an insurance company, said to UrBC representative. ‘Most workers employed by the building companies

Uraltrac Ltd. produced 647,400,000 RUR worth of goods in November 2006, which comes to 100% of the target figures. The plant also produced 214 engineer vehicles worth 388,400,000 RUR, including 56 tractors, 15 pipelayers, and 142 ripper-dozer units (97.6% of the target figure). In November 2006, the plant shipped 801,760,000 RUR worth of goods (which falls short of the target sales record by 3.3%) and sold 220 engineer vehicles worth 497,381,000 RUR, including 208 tractors and T-10-based units and 7 ripper-dozers, the company’s spokesperson said to UrBC representative.

Chelindbank announced the beginning of its special offer period on December 1, 2006. This offer is referred to as New Year’s Premiere; it will be valid until February 28, 2007. The bank’s clients may win a gift certificate for Nissan Primera and 77 smaller prizes such as mobile phones, audio gadgets and photo cameras. According to the bank’s spokesperson, the eligibility for participation in the lottery depends on whether a client has put at least 100,000 RUR, $3,000, or ?3,000 in a deposit opened between December 1, 2006 and February 28, 2007 for a term of at least 555 days. The drawing will

The Mayor of Yekaterinburg Arkadiy Chernetskiy signed the Yekaterinburg Hotels Project today, reports the press officer for the city council. This project provides for the construction of 68 accommodation facilities, 50% of which are going to be hotels with varying comfort ratings, as well as for renovation of the existing hotels, upgrading its old services and offering some new ones within 2006-2015. This program is expected to create approximately 13,000 jobs. There are currently 38 hotels and 22 tourist-hosting facilities without a hotel status operating in Yekaterinburg altogether.

‘Some administrative quarrels between two parties cooperating under an agreement will occur every once in while, yet this case is quite unique in that these parties got the Association of Regional Russian Banks and the Federal Insurance Surveillance Agency involved in their conflict for no apparent reason. These authorities do not facilitate the conflict resolution and only breed extra rumors; the only thing they can do is provide moral justification for one of the parties involved but no tangible support. Moreover, they also create the unnecessary hype around the issue,’ the Director of the

‘We deal with cases connected with the unscrupulous actions of insurance companies quite often: at least a dozen claims are laid against them every year. Our guild, for instance, has had to tackle cases involving such insurers as Gamma, Rosgosstrakh, and Yugoria,’ Ludmila Mekhontseva of the regional Lawyers’ Guild said to UrBC representative. ‘Most claims have to do with the obligatory car insurance and hull insurance following some car accidents when the insurance companies allegedly do the following: firstly, they reduce the repair expenses figures and the cost of replacing the car parts;

A public meeting of the Association of Regional Russian Banks Coordination Committee consisting of the Association executives from the federal districts and Russian Federation subjects was held in Yekaterinburg today. The meeting was devoted to the methods and ways of banking activities consolidation and to the recent trends and potential of this field of banking business. The meeting was attended by Anatoliy Aksakov, the President of the Association, Alexander Stroganov (Vice President), Alexander Khandruev (First Vice President), Deputy Chairman of Ural Bankers’ Union Evgeniy Bolotin, and

Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Eduard Rossel and the Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin met to discuss the regional building and housing industry development and Academic construction project. This is an interesting project meant for providing homes to 350,000 people. According to the Governor, this district will represent the new concept of a comfortable life, as the project covers the infrastructure development and construction of trade centers and entertainment facilities. This new district is to appear in the south-west of Yekaterinburg and is expected to occupy 2,500 hectares of

Bank information and reference bulletin published a report on the activity of Sverdlovsk Region banks in the first half of 2006. According to this report, the dynamics of the banks’ own and debt capital have led to a decrease in self-financing (from 44.1% at the beginning of this year to 40.8% by the end of June 2006). The banks experienced no equity shortage in terms of fixed assets in the six months of 2006; on average, their own capital exceeded the fixed assets figures by 17% on June 30, 2006 (compared with 8% at the beginning of the year).

‘Our company has been using MegaFon Ural, the mobile phone operator, for four years,’ says Tatiana Moiseeva, the representative of Global System Mobile Club. ‘We like this company’s far-sighted policy; it is quite obvious that MegaFon Ural manages to keep up with the most recent trends in its field. The schemes it offers to businesses allow us to reduce our cell phone communication expenses by a few times, especially in terms of roaming and GPRS services,’ Ms Moiseeva said.

Existing home sales got past the psychological point of the average of 70,997 RUR per square meter in the center of Yekaterinburg (i.e. in Moskovskaya St., Chelyuskintsy St., Vostochnaya St., Dekabristy St., Belinskiy St., and Bolshakov St.) on November 28, 2006, reports the Analytical Department of the Ural Chamber of Real Estate. The figure comes to 64,575 RUR 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), to 57,233 RUR in the city’s second

According to the Central Bank of Russia, the volume of loans given by UralTransBank to nongovernmental commercial organizations for a term of 91 to 180 days went down by 55.5% (from 278.905m RUR to 124.032m RUR) in January-November 2006.

VympelCom (Beeline), the mobile phone operator, has made some personnel shifts in its Ural branch. Former Commercial Director of VympelCom in the Ural Region Andrei Pyatakhin was appointed Corporate Sales Director in the company’s Moscow branch. He was succeeded by the former Commercial Director of VympelCom Yekaterinburg Evgeniya Grishina, who is now acting Commercial Director of VympelCom in the Ural Region.

The dispute between two administrative bodies, namely, ROSNO, the insurance company, and UralTransBank, keeps unwinding. The bank accused the insurer of failing to meet its liabilities in terms of compensation payments related to credit insurance. The bank also claimed that ROSNO never provided any well-grounded explanations as to why they kept refusing to pay the bank. ROSNO, on its part, accuses UralTransBank of failing to produce the papers needed to get the compensation despite the existing agreements. Moreover, the insurer says that the bank was trying to receive several payments for one

‘I normally deal with five to six cases involving claims against insurance companies connected with obligatory car insurance annually,’ Galina Nizen of Offer Law Firm said to UrBC representative. ‘Right after this type of insurance was introduced, I handled two cases involving Rosgosstrakh where the company had reduced the compensation payment figure at its own will. The car owner got an independent commission of experts to examine the case and produced the report that stated the sum of money needed to repair the car. Yet Rosgosstrakh lowered the figure by 70%. Later on, our firm dealt with

The Association of Regional Russian Banks tried to draw the attention of the Federal Insurance Surveillance Agency to the issue of consumer loan-related financial risk insurance for the banks. Their letter to the Agency said that since April 2006, ROSNO, an insurance company, had not been meeting its liabilities concerning the general agreement signed by its Ural branch and UralTransBank: the bank received neither compensation nor any well-grounded justification of refusal in any of the events insured against. The appeal of UralTransBank claims that ROSNO is letting down not only its clients

SKB-Bank has recently introduced a new subsidiary in the town of Verkhnyaya Salda, Sverdlovsk Region. The office is located right in the center of the city (73 Engels St.). Verkhnesaldinskiy office, as it is called, offers the whole range of banking services for both businesses and individuals. The natural persons are welcomed from 9 AM to 7 PM on weekdays and from 9 AM to 4 PM on weekends, the working hours for businesses and sole traders are from 9 AM to 4 PM on weekdays (there is no lunch break). Verkhnyaya Salda is the 21st regional town to get an SKB-Bank office. The bank owns 51