RBC.Rating’s analysts came up with a list of Russia’s leading banks in terms of cards issued by July 1, 2010. OAO SKB-Bank, with its 647,770 bank cards, proved the country’s No. 20, Ural Federal District’s second best, and Sverdlovsk Region’s top bank in this respect. According to the rating, SKB-Bank increased the number of plastic cards it issued by 13.8% in one year. The bank used to have 569,000 cards circulating on July 1, 2009. 17,182 new ones were issued in January-July 2010, which was almost 2,000 items more than in January-July 2009.

The court of appeals supported the ruling pronounced by Sverdlovsk Region’s division of the Federal Antimonopoly Service regarding MRSK Urala, the interregional electricity network distribution company, and RSK, the regional network distribution company. The two distributors had been accused of colluding, the FAS’s press service reports. FAS’s Sverdlovsk Region division declared on October 9, 2009 that MRSK Urala and RSK had violated Article 11 (part 1, paragraph 5) of the Competition Protection Law. The offense consisted in the two companies colluding in such a way that unfavorable

Vysokovoltniy Soyuz Concern presented some computers to the children of Mirogoshchanskiy Orphanage in Ukraine, Rovno Region. The gift was presented on the eve of September 1, Knowledge Day, by Deputy General Director of OOO RZVA-Electric (a member of the concern) Vladimir Protsyuk, the company’s press officer reports. ‘We differ greatly from other donators in that we deal in ‘smart’ charity, that is, prior to giving some help to an orphanage we meet the management in person to find out about the children’s needs. This is necessary to make sure the orphanages get exactly what they need most,’

OAO KhantyMansiyskNefteProdukt is not going to pay any share dividends for the year 2009. The decision to this extent was made by the company’s Board of Directors. Instead, the net profit (17.37 million RUR) is to be directed to cover up for the previous years’ losses. The annual general meeting is expected to take place in Khanty-Mansiysk on June 25, 2010.

The Bank of Russia appointed its authorized representatives in twenty-seven Russian banks, the bank’s PR Department reports. For one, three Ural Federal District-based banks are still under the Central Bank’s special supervision. These are OAO Bank Severnaya Kazna, OAO Bank24.ru, and OAO Khanty-Mansiyskiy Bank. Besides, the Central Bank’s authorized representatives keep working in OAO Alfa-Bank, OAO Bank VTB, OAO Russian Standard Bank, OAO Home Credit & Finance Bank, and a number of other organizations.

Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (ММК) carried a financial report for the second quarter of 2010; the report was drawn up in compliance with the International Accounting Standards. MMK Group’s revenue in the second quarter of 2010 rose by 25%, or up to $2,068m against the first quarter of the year. The consolidated EBITDA went up by 17% and reached $437m. ‘Despite the dramatic increase in the raw materials prices in the second quarter and less favorable market opportunities, our EBITDA margin still looked good at 21.1% starting June 2010,’ the report states. As for the profits, they

The 8th Arbitration & Appeals Court ruled in favor of the decision made by Tyumen division of the Federal Antimonopoly Service; now the Service declared that OAO TyumenEnergo had violated the existing antimonopoly agreement in that the company backed out of signing a technical connection agreement with the owners of dwellings located in the villages of Kazarovo and Bereznyaki, the FAS’s press service reports.

OAO Stroymash Plant is taking part in Budpragres, the major international exhibition in Minsk, for the third time this year. ‘The plant’s produce that one can see at the fair is very popular with customers around Russia and the CIS, and this success is well deserved. To make sure working with us is both comfortable and reliable, we keep on developing, upgrading our production facilities, expanding the range of machinery available, and improving on the service quality,’ the plant’s representatives said to UrBC reporters. ‘The exhibition made it clear that visitors were quite interested in

Starting October 1, 2010, Ural Airlines is to operate flights to Sofia. This is, in fact, the first scheduled flight ever that will take the passengers from the Urals to Bulgaria’s capital. The agreement on the launch of the flight was made possible thanks to the joint efforts on the part of the air carrier and the Bulgarian consulate. ‘The number of Bulgarian visas we offer has increased by over five times over the last five years. The figure went up by 60% in the year 2010 alone, that is, compared with the year 2009,’ says Bulgaria’s Consul in Yekaterinburg Plamen Petkov. ‘Prior to the

The Federal Air Transport Agency (Rosaviation) came up with a report on the flights delayed by airlines over the last few months. According to the agency’s data, SkyExpress put off a quarter of all the flights it operated in August 2010, thus becoming the top flights delayer among all the Russian air carriers. Rosaviation reports SkyExpress operated 947 flights in August altogether, including 235 delayed ones. What is more, forty-eight of these delayed flights (thirty-four scheduled ones and fourteen chartered ones) were put off by more than six hours.

Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service took legal action against the Russian Federation Social Security Fund as the latter is suspected of violating the existing antimonopoly legislation, the spokesperson for the Service reports. The fund’s charges are based on Article 17 (part 2) of the Competition Protection law (denying access to taking part in a tender). ‘It is believed that the fund insists that all the bidders, who are supposed to deliver computer appliances to the company, make sure all the computers run on Intel microprocessors,’ the spokesperson explains.

Sverdlovsk Region Government’s Environment and Nature Management Committee looked into the conservation program of Nizhniy Tagil Iron & Steel Works (NTMK). It was reported at the committee’s meeting that the enterprise was still one of Sverdlovsk Region’s top twenty air polluters. ‘Up to 60% of the air in Nizhniy Tagil consists of pollutants emitted by NTMK, and the quality of this air has not improved a bit over the last few years, according to the data available from the automatic air monitoring tests,’ the committee members stated.

‘Preliminarily, we can say the cause of the fire at Ganina Yama monastery was stove heating mismanagement,’ the representatives of Russia’s Department of Emergencies announced at a press briefing dedicated to the accident in the temple on the premises of the monastery at Ganina Yama site. The DoE officials said that, in principle, the temple could be restored, since the foundation and the east entrance had remained intact. However, the valuables reportedly situated in the temple were lost forever. The valuables in question might comprise the icon of Saint Nicholas the Miracle Worker that used

It has been detected that recently that OAO Uralmashzavod/Ural Heavy Machine-Building Plant is not storing its documents in the way prescribed by the law, so Ural Federal District’s division of the Federal Financial Markets Service imposed a 200,000-ruble fine on the company.

The Cyprian authorities, who proposed introducing a Consulate-General in Yekaterinburg, intend the establishment to serve as the regional visa application center that will render its services to the dwellers of Ural Federal District, The Republic of Cyprus’s Minister for Trade, Industry, and Tourism Antonis Pashalidis said at his meeting with acting Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Anatoly Gredin. The meeting was mainly dedicated to issues related to the introduction of the consulate in Yekaterinburg and to the prospects of Cyprus and Sverdlovsk Region’s trade and economic relations. Now

The analysts of the Delovoy Kvartal magazine came up with a top list of Yekaterinburg and Sverdlovsk Region-based banks that did best in terms of consumer lending volumes as of July 1, 2010. OAO SKB-Bank proved one of the first local banking organizations in terms of total lending portfolio volume and the bank with the largest volume of loans issued to private individuals. The magazine analysts report SKB-Bank offered a total of 8.227 billion RUR worth of loans to private customers by July 1, 2010. The bank’s grand lending portfolio comprises 7.5 billion RUR worth of consumer loans and about

Summertime is the traditional vacation period when all the business activity goes through a downfall of sorts. Nevertheless, these summer months have been special in that the gradual economic recovery and the increasing demand for goods and services made the business community feel more optimistic than usual. Now that borrowing money has grown cheaper it looks both possible and profitable. As a result, small and medium enterprises are taking out increasingly more bank loans. ‘We offered thrice as many loans to SMEs in August 2010 than we did at the beginning of the summer, and the demand for

Over 420,000 foreigners visited Yekaterinburg in January-September 2010, which was actually 27,000 more than in the year 2009. It has been estimated that 539,000 foreign citizens will have visited the city by the end of the year 2010, says Ilona Starodubtseva, Deputy Mayor of Yekaterinburg Viktor Konteev’s press secretary. As a matter of fact, 48% of foreigners arrive in Yekaterinburg to get hired, 31% come on private visits, 19% have business to do here, 2.6% come as tourists, and 2% intend to study here. Experts report Yekaterinburg has developed a great tourism-hosting and international

‘I’m not going to resign unless I feel positive that the new city-managing system is viable,’ Mayor of Yekaterinburg Arkadiy Chernetskiy announced at a press conference in the town hall. Chernetskiy also said the idea of a people-elected mayor who’d also chair the municipal Duma plus a Duma-appointed head of the administration looked good to him. The mayor added that the current system had a lot of advantages; for one, it protected Yekaterinburg from incompetent people in power. He stressed that any changes in the way a city is administered had to be made extremely carefully. Arkadiy

President of MMK Management Company Viktor Rashnikov signed an order for pay rises at Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (ММК). The increase in wages and salaries will go along the wage-growth program adopted by the company. For one, the pay of workers, managers, white-collar experts, and clerks will go up 10%. This is the second time the enterprise’s employees have got a pay rise this year, as the wages and salaries went up 10% in March 2010. All in all, MMK is expected to spend about 1 billion RUR on wage increases in the year 2010. ‘Even now, when times are still a bid hard, we manage to