The credit rating service called off Rusfinance Bank’s ratings upon the bank’s own request. Rusfinance Bank’s long- and short-term contractor’s ratings were preliminarily affirmed at BB+ and B, respectively, with Negative Rating Outlook. Also, the bank’s national scale rating was preliminarily affirmed at ruAA+, with Negative Rating Outlook.

Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) closed up the tender aimed at determining the coupon interest rate for its 5bn-ruble BO-01 bond issue valid for 1,092 days (3 year). The issue provides for an annual offer and the coupon period comes to 182 days. The investors placed 255 applications for the tender worth 19.9 billion RUR altogether, so the issue was actually oversubscribed by nearly 300%. According to the results of the tender, the annual interest rate for the first and the second coupons of MMK’s bond issue was set at 9.45%. The coupon yield during the first year of circulation will

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court is to look into two claims laid by local banks against Pnevmostroymashina and PSM-Gidravlika on November 19, 2009. Sberbank of Russia’s Oktyabrskoye division 1794 wants to be paid 179.66 million RUR worth of debt and to have the defendants’ real estate assets (some buildings and land allotments) arrested. TransCreditBank demands that the defendants pay it 104.26 million RUR; the bank also asked for the seizure of their buildings and land allotments, but this application was turned down by the court. In the meantime, Pnevmostroymashina is already undergoing

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court has recently started to process the claim laid by Mikhail Maksimov against Leonid Itskov and Uralincombank Ural Innovational Commercial Bank (UIC-Bank) regarding the plaintiff’s right to a shareholding in the bank’s authorized capital. The preliminary court hearing needed to understand all the circumstances essential to handling the claim and getting evidence and proof is to take place on Thursday. The whole thing began in July 2009 when the bank got many new owners. According to the company’s official website July listings, Leonid Itskov owned 7.52% of

Head of Russian Pension Fund’s Sverdlovsk Region division Sergey Dubinkin was detained on his way to Koltsovo Airport of Yekaterinburg on November 19, 2009. The operation was carried out by the officers of Ural Federal District’s division of the Ministry of Internal Affairs; this was done within the framework of the criminal lawsuit regarding the embezzlement of 955 million RUR belonging to the Pensions Fund from the accounts of Bank VEFK-Ural. The spokesperson for the law-enforcement agency reports Dubinkin was supposedly going to flee to Moscow. He is now kept in a detention ward. This head

Russkiy Narodniy Bank intends to make Uralvagonzavod Scientific and Production Corporation pay it over 10 million RUR. The bank placed a claim against Uralvagonzavod and Uralvagonagro with Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court and now insists on being paid 10,000,000 RUR worth of the promissory note debt, 106,944 RUR worth of interest, and 106,944 RUR worth of fines (as stated in Paragraph 48 on the Provision on Bills of Exchange and Promissory Notes. The defendant refused to agree with the claims since on the date the disputed promissory note was signed the company’s General Director Nikolai

Yekaterinburg-based Koltsovo Airport is going to raise its jet fuel prices by 3.3% on November 23, 2009. ‘The increase in our retail price is a follow-up on the rising supplier’s prices. All Russian airports have had to raise their prices recently, and ours is actually the same as the market’s average one,’ the airport’s press officer reports. The airport last changed fuel prices on September 18, 2009 when the price rose by 6.7%.

‘Foreign banks and crediting agencies are willing to cooperate with the Russian companies and are very positive about Russia’s future economic development,’ Landesbank Berlin AG Export Financing Director Bernd Schmidt announced at an Interfax press conference. ‘Sometimes direct interaction is possible, including cases when a bank and agency finance some long-term projects. In most cases, however, a customer needs some Russian bank as an intermediary. Actually, we choose our Russian partners very carefully and work only with the most reliable banks,’ he added.

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court resolved case А60-45339/2009-С11 as of November 2, 2009 by declaring DEKRA PLUS insolvent. The company will now have to undergo six-month bankruptcy proceedings. Vladimir Rozhdestvenskiy of Delo Self-Regulatory Organization of Trustees in Bankruptcy Noncommercial Partnership has been appointed the company’s trustee in bankruptcy.

The sales revenues of Sverdlovsk Region-based VSMPO-Avisma went down by 3.6 billion RUR, or 16% in January-September 2009. The revenue figure thus only came to 19.2 billion RUR. The company says the revenues dropped because of reduced sales output. However, the drop in sales revenues was partially made up for by 18% decrease in the prime cost of the company’s produce, VSMPO-Avisma Corporation says. The corporation’s gross profit declined by 7.5 billion RUR, or 12.6% in the third quarter of 2009. Its net profit plunged by 33.4% and amounted to 977.171 million RUR, whereas the return on assets

The internal rules and policy of Bank VTB Severo-Zapad and Citibank Commercial Bank have not been approved of by the Federal Financial Market Service so as to prevent money laundering

‘Yekaterinburg’s automobile market has shrunk by 40% to 45% since the recession started. This is why we are going to have only one of the three initially planned show rooms commissioned this year. This will be our motor show in the city’s Zheleznodorozhniy district. All in all, five show rooms in Metallurgov St. have had to be frozen,’ Deputy Mayor of Yekaterinburg Viktor Konteev said at a press briefing in Yekaterinburg. The frozen show rooms belong to Volkswagen, Nissan, Mitsubishi, and UralFranceAvto. As for the BMW show room, it won’t be opened this year, but the construction process has

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin met his special representative in the town of Karabash Vyacheslav Yagodinets. According to the spokesperson for the Governor, Vyacheslav Yagodinets made a report on the results of his performance in the capacity of a special representative. He explained that he had been cooperating closely with the acting Mayor Tatiana Pankratova in such areas as getting ready for the winter, upgrading the public housing services sector, and supporting the social infrastructure. The official asked Petr Sumin to help introduce street lamps on the main streets and next

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin held a meeting with the General Director of Ural Mining & Metallurgical Company Andrei Kozitsin. According to the spokesperson for the Governor, Petr Sumin met the new head of Chelyabinsk Zinc Plant Andrei Panshin during this meeting. Also, Andrei Kozitsin informed the Governor of the preliminary results of the enterprise’s performance in 2009 and spoke of its plans for 2010. Kozitsin believes zinc will be sold for about $1,800 per ton in 2010, which will mean the plant will be able to break even or make a profit and thus pay more taxes to the

Uralburmash’s net loss amounted to 89.47 million RUR in the three quarters of 2009 (with data compiled in accordance with the Russian Accounting Standards); in the three quarters of 2008, however, the company had 37.25 million RUR worth of profit, the joint stock company’s website says. As for the third quarter alone, the enterprise suffered 28.39 million RUR worth of losses, which was 9.48 million RUR less than in the previous quarter. The company says its losses have to do with the growing lending portfolio, the need to pay loan interests, and the lack of floating assets caused by the

The net profit of ZAO Sverdkhimles went down in the third quarter of 2009; the figure dropped from 101,000 RUR in the second quarter of the year down to 64,000 RUR in the third quarter. The company says this happened because of shrinking production output.

‘I promise to do my best to make sure the socioeconomic situation improves in Sverdlovsk Region and so in Russia in general. We’ll make every effort to fight the crisis as soon as possible, and, in fact, I have already devised an action plan for this,’ the new Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Alexander Misharin says. ‘Firstly, to improve the situation we need to focus on the local problem companies such as Baranchinskiy electromechanical plant and some others. Secondly, it’s essential to adopt a consolidated budget that will cover all the social projects, including healthcare, education, and

Ural Airlines and DANKO Travel Company recently introduced a new flight from Yekaterinburg, Russia to Rimini, Italy. ‘The need for more flights to Italy comes up every January. However, the announced flights got cancelled in some of the previous years. This year, we can guarantee that all the flights announced for January 2, 9, and 16, 2010 will actually take place. We are doing our best to sell as many tickets as possible and even offer special events in addition to the tickets. For one, our customers can enjoy traveling, business, and skiing activities while in Italy. What is more, our

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin spoke of his action plan for the agricultural development of the region at a solemn reception dedicated to the Agricultural Worker’s Day Firstly, it is necessary to increase the acreage of winter crops and to keep introducing some modern farming systems and new crop-raising technologies, the Governor said. Secondly, the regional livestock and poultry farming have to grow as productive as possible. Next year, for example, the annual milk yield will, it is hoped, reach 4,000 liters per cow in addition to improved gross output and keeping up with the

Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) won two gold medals at Metal Expo 2009, the international industrial exhibition in Moscow, the company reports. The medals were introduced to encourage and reward the Russian industrial, scientific and production, and research teams that have designed and launched some new machinery, technologies, or high quality metal goods that meet the modern technological standards. These gold and silver medals are awarded to the best enterprises and organizations. MMK was proclaimed the exhibition laureate and given Metal Expo 2009 gold medal for the development