The international rating agency recently affirmed all of the Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s ratings: the bank’s long- and short-term contractor’s credit ratings were affirmed at B- and C, respectively, while the bank’s national scale rating was affirmed at ruBBB-. What is more, the Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s ratings were taken off the agency’s CreditWatch list, the bank’s press officer reports. ‘The approval the bank’s ratings get, as well as the fact that they have been taken off the CreditWatch list, both result from the company’s sufficient ability to

Yekaterinburg-based Koltsovo Airport raised its jet fuel prices by 6.7% on September 18, 2009. The price now comes to 18,980 RUR per 1,000 kg, the spokesperson for the airport reports. ‘The price increase has to do with our suppliers raising their prices significantly. Besides, other Russian airports are doing the same,’ says the airport’s Deputy GD Anton Fedotov. Koltsovo last changed the jet fuel prices on August 23, 2009 when the price went up by 4.9% and reached 17,780 RUR per 1,000 kg.

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court is to resume the hearing of the claim laid by Bank VTB against Pnevmostroymashina and PSM-Gidravlika on September 17, 2009. The plaintiff insists on being paid 51,833,114.55 RUR and on having the defendants’ mortgaged property arrested. The court’s last session closed with the plaintiff raising the claim to 53,000,509.48 RUR due to the increasing interest rate and the loan commission. The court actually satisfied this claim. In the meanwhile, Pnevmostroymashina applied for bankruptcy in September 2009, with debts to various creditors running up to over 700

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court started handling Unit-Stroy’s bankruptcy proceedings. The case was initiated on August 19, 2009, when Russkiye Samotsvety appealed to court, demanding that OOO Unit-Stroy should be declared insolvent. The application stated that the latter was unable to meet its creditors’ claims in full, since the liabilities amounted to more than Unit-Stroy’s assets were worth. Russkiye Samotsvety’s application was accepted by the court, so the case is to be considered on September 17, 2009.

Yekaterinburg’s Kirovskiy district court has partially satisfied the claims laid by Vladimir Serebrennikov and Pavel Kusyutin against Avtoland-Sever (the official dealer of Ford, Land Rover, Jaguar, Volvo, Mitsubishi, and Mazda in Yekaterinburg) this week. The show room’s unhappy customers took legal action after they hadn’t received the automobiles they had already paid for in full. The plaintiffs therefore wanted the car delivery agreement to be canceled. They also insisted on being paid the full cost of the car, the bank loan interest, and the moral damage compensation. This is, in fact,

The net profit of Sverdlovsk Region’s major telecommunications provider declined by 2% in the first half of 2009 compared with the year before, reaching 1.658 billion RUR, the spokesperson for the company reports. For one, the cellular transmission revenues decreased by 3.6% in January-June 2009, whereas the income stemming from the central office area connection, the traffic hookup and inflow, and the agency services went down by 9%, 13.4%, and 35.7%, respectively. In addition, the other services revenues plunged by 58.3%. Finally, Uralsvyazinform’s operating profit rose by 6% in the first

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court is still investigating the claim laid by Sverdlovsk Region’s Deputy Prosecutor against NOVA-Stroy, the local developer. The plaintiff demands that the company return a 2,244-square-meter land allotment at 18 Cherepanov St. to the City of Yekaterinburg. The court has already agreed to make it illegal for the defendant to carry out any transactions involving the disputed land allotment or to convey the right over this property to any third party. The Deputy Prosecutor explained that this was necessary since NOVA-Stroy might attempt to register its rights over

‘Now that we’ve analyzed the current retail market we can see how much it has shrunk lately. At the moment, only a quarter of last year’s dynamically developing players are still there, and the market has been stagnating for the last six months, with only small signs of recovery lately,’ Director of Art Properties Natalya Oreshina announced at a press conference coordinated by Commercial Real Estate magazine in Yekaterinburg. ‘Most companies understand that if they fail to develop now they will lose two to four years later on. However, they take daunting action. Adidas, for instance, is

The assets of URALROS Insurance Company will be sold by auction on October 26, 2009, Aval Group (the auctioneer) reports. The Federal Financial Markets Service revoked the insurer’s license in June 2009 and had the company undergo bankruptcy proceedings. The assets in question include, among other items, a 40,400-square-meter office at 14 Lenin St. in Krasnouralsk, Sverdlovsk Region; two one-room studios in Nizhniy Tagil and Rezh, and three automobiles, namely, VAZ 21074 made in 2007, Daewoo Nexia Gle made in 2007, and Renault Logan (SR) made in 2006. The price of the office and the

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court rejected Bank VTB Severo-Zapad’s application regarding the arrest of their debtor’s property. The bank laid a claim against Rezh metallurgical plant because the latter failed to pay off its loan and the interest, all of which totaled to 15,648,305.18 RUR; the plaintiff also insisted on having the defendant’s mortgaged property arrested. In addition to this, Bank VTB asked for the arrest of the debtor’s money kept in and transferred into bank accounts, as well as for the arrest of any other assets that could compensate for the debt.

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court keeps looking into the claim laid by LSR Ural Management Company against Mayak Corporation; the plaintiff wants to be paid 475,680 RUR and to retrieve its property from deforcement. LSR Ural applied to court in the hope of getting Mayak Corporation to return the machinery the latter keeps illegally, namely, three 300-kilogram lifting devices. The plaintiff also insists on getting 325,680 RUR as opportunity cost compensation. The application was accepted by Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court on August 11, 2009. The court actually agreed to have the disputed

BINBANK’s Board of Directors decided in the course of a recent meeting to close down the bank’s representation in Nizhniy Tagil, Sverdlovsk Region. This means the office located at 64 Lenin St. will soon stop operating. The exact date of the liquidation is to be set by BINBANK’s President Mikhail Shishkhanov; he will also have to carry out all the procedures necessary to go through with the closure.

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin met some of the Russian international prize-winners to thank them for their achievements. This meeting was attended by the world judo and boxing championships winners and by the sports players who won in the Paralympics. Governor Sumin said Chelyabinsk Region was a home to the greatest number of Russian champions. The local schoolchildren’s world boxing championship’s medals made the Russian national team the world’s No.1, for instance. ‘Your victories stem from some hard, never-stopping work. You focused all your strength and stamina on the

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin met some of the Russian international prize-winners to thank them for their achievements. This meeting was attended by the world judo and boxing championships winners and by the sports players who won in the Paralympics. Governor Sumin said Chelyabinsk Region was a home to the greatest number of Russian champions. The local schoolchildren’s world boxing championship’s medals made the Russian national team the world’s No.1, for instance. ‘Your victories stem from some hard, never-stopping work. You focused all your strength and stamina on the

Ural Airlines’ Planning Department experts report the airline is going to fly this year’s millionth passenger on September 17, 2009. ‘We are not quite sure yet which flight this lucky passenger is going to take, but we’d say it will probably be our Yekaterinburg-Saint Petersburg flight (departure time is 2:45 PM), or our Yekaterinburg-Prague flight (departure time is 2:00 PM). This millionth passenger will receive congratulations and presents from the carrier; what is more, all of this flight’s passengers will be treated to a glass of champagne,’ the spokesperson for the company said to an

TGK-9 Sverdlovsk Region-based power facilities are currently being prepared for this fall and winter’s heating season. The company reports that, as far as industrial enterprises are concerned, its greatest debtors are Russian Chrome 1915 (which owes TGK-9 over 11 million RUR) and Uralmash Machine-Building Corporation (which owes the power supplier more than 60 million RUR). All in all, the regional companies owe 2.18 billion RUR to their electricity and power suppliers, of which 1.5 billion RUR is made up of the communal housing services departments’ debts.

‘Most of Sverdlovsk Region’s cities and towns are not prepared to face the upcoming heating season, since they owe a lot of money to the energy sector enterprises,’ the spokesperson for Sverdlovenergosbyt, the local power supplier, announced today. The region’s communal housing services departments still haven’t paid off their debts by mid-September, with the greatest sums owed to the suppliers by the departments of Nizhniy Tagil, Pervouralsk, Artemovskiy, Tavda, Kamensk-Uralskiy, Ivdel, Serov, Krasnouralskiy, Kamyshlov, Kirovgrad, Revda, Berezovskiy, and Rezh. According to the spokesperson

‘Since our end consumers haven’t been paying their gas bills, we now come to owe nearly 3 billion RUR to our natural gas supplier,’ Uralsevergaz’s Deputy GD Dmitriy Lavrenko said at a recent press conference in Yekaterinburg. ‘It is very fortunate that the supplier shows a lot of tolerance and understanding, so reaching a compromise should be possible. Besides, we keep using bank loans to pay off our debts, and we intend to keep doing so in the future,’ he added. ‘The way I see it, the main problem with our consumers’ debts lies in the difficulty of law-enforcement procedures. In fact, we do

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court keeps looking into the claim laid by Raiffeisen-Bank vs. Pnevmostroymashina and PSM-Gidravlika. The plaintiff insists on being paid over 119.21 million RUR. The court has already turned down the bank’s demand to have the defendants’ mortgaged property arrested. The property in question comprised a group of auxiliary shops, two land allotments, and a detached building with some extensions. The court ruled that the plaintiff’s application failed to produce evidence of this arrest being the only way to make sure the court’s decision could be executed. Nor did

Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) keeps testing its second polymeric coating unit. The representatives of the Italian Fata Hunter (the equipment supplier) and the team of experts from Prokat Montazh (the project’s general contractor) as well as the field engineers from the enterprise’s electric lab are still working in the coating shop. For one, they have already trained the unit’s future operators using the company’s first polymeric coating unit that was launched in July 2004. According to MMK’s PR Department, the existence of the first unit made mastering the second one much easier,