Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin decided to have the agricultural assets of Kundravy village (Chebarkulskiy district) nationalized with the help of Food Corporation Regional State Unitary Enterprise. Following the Governor’s order, 63 million RUR has already been allocated from the region’s budget. Deputy Governor Andrei Kosilov commented on Sumin’s decision in the course of a briefing. According to Kosilov, Kundravy’s agricultural business has not been a success over the last few years because new proprietors kept coming in all the time. Deputy Governor believes nationalizing the

‘Our company is using two registered trademarks at the moment. One of them has belonged to us since 1998, the other one since the year 2000. These trademarks are present on the bottles containing our manufacturer’s mineral water, that is, Obukhovskaya-11. However, Isadora Ltd marketed an Obukhovskaya mineral water in February 2009 whose labels bear some trademarks that are so similar to ours that they can be very easily confused,’ Obukhovskiye Mineral Waters lawyer Vera Zakirko said to UrBC. Meanwhile, Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court keeps looking into the claim laid by Obukhovskiye

‘We had to make twelve people redundant in our bank’s Sverdlovsk Region branch. These were mainly additional office workers employed in the mortgage lending departments,’ the spokesperson for VTB24 said to an UrBC reporter. According to the bank’s official statement, the Group’s staff was reduced by 1.3% (or 565 people) in the first quarter of 2009, so they currently employ 41,427 workers. VTB24, a retail bank and the Group’s largest employer, cut its personnel by 2.2 % (or 394 people), so there are now 17,487 employees there. ‘VTB24 hasn’t closed down any of its regional offices this year.

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court is currently considering a claim laid by the City of Yekaterinburg against Torgoviy Dvor. The city council insists on the defendant giving away a certain land allotment. Now Torgoviy Dvor is a legal entity representing a downtown Mytnyi Dvor shopping mall housing brands such as Mexx, Calvin Klein Jeans, Carlo Pazolini, and Shopping Mania as well as a number of restaurants (Planeta Sushi, IL Patio, and Rostick’s KFC). Mytnyi Dvor’s management has so far been unable to provide any comments.

Koltsovo Airport of Yekaterinburg still has to collect over 100 million RUR worth of debt from various airlines, with another 60 million counted as bad debt coming from AirUnion Alliance’s insolvent carriers. This information has been provided by the airport itself. As of August 5, 2009, among the airport’s debtors were GTK Rossiya, Aeroflot-Nord, Aeroflot-Don, Siberia, UTair, KD-Avia, and Zapolyarie. Koltsovo Airport’s press officer reports these carriers’ debts keep growing, whereas the airport’s profits fell by 20% due to a decreased passenger turnover. These were the driving forces behind

The Court of Florence, Italy refused to extradite Alexei Kalinichenko to Russia, despite the fact that this country’s investigative authorities believe the former Bank24.ru executive had stolen over a billion RUR from customers in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, and other Russian cities. The court looked into the entries made by Kalinichenko’s former customers on his websites and came to the conclusion that the suspect’s life and safety would be seriously jeopardized if he was handed over to the Russian authorities, Kommersant reported on August 6, 2009. ‘Alexei Kalinichenko was first heard of in

The Italian court rejected Russia’s claims regarding the extradition of Bank24.ru’s former BOD member Alexei Kalinichenko recently. ‘In the course of a preliminary hearing, the court ruled that Alexei Kalinichenko’s extradition must be rejected to the Russian party. None of our officers were present at the hearing, so we cannot say what exactly was the ground behind this decision,’ the spokesperson for Ural Federal District’s division of the Russian Federation Ministry of Internal Affairs informed UrBC. The extradition request was placed with the Italian authorities by the Russian Federation

The independent rating agency affirmed the Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s Credit Rating at BB-, with Stable rating outlook, the bank’s press officer reports. Rus-Rating’s comments make it clear that they see the business as a universal retail bank with good shares on the Urals’ private deposit and brokerage operations markets. The bank is also reported to develop dynamically its loan offers to private individuals and SMEs as well as to build up on the regional office network.

According to VIZ-Stal’s financial report (compiled in accordance with the Russian Accounting Standards), the steel manufacturer’s net profit decreased by 58% in the second quarter of 2009. The sales reached 17,700 tons of goods in April-May 2009, with sales revenues amounting to 1.9 billion RUR and gross profit coming to .9 billion RUR. ‘Our net profit nosedived because of the changing foreign currency exchange rates, which affected our foreign currency transactions,’ VIZ-Stal reports.

A forming roll plant based in Kushva, Sverdlovsk Region, is to undergo bankruptcy proceedings, Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court ruled on August 4, 2009. The demand to declare the plant insolvent was actually placed with the court by Sverdlovenergosbyt on June 26, 2009.

The independent rating agency affirmed SKB-Bank’s Credit Rating at BB+, with Stable rating outlook on August 4, 2009. Rus-Rating’s analysts say SKB-Bank is doing well thanks to good chances of getting state support and having strong proprietors (who are also likely to help SKB-Bank get through). They also praise the bank’s existing market shares and having a stable business customer base (consisting of Sverdlovsk Region’s large, solvent enterprises). What is more, SKB-Bank does not depend on international funding and can boast sufficient capital adequacy.

14,000 square meters worth of housing has already been allocated for the army officers and war reserve military men in Yekaterinburg’s new Academic district. Prices will come to 33,600 RUR per square meter, even though the city’s average price reaches 60,000 RUR to 70,000 RUR,’ Sverdlovsk Region Minister for Construction and Architecture Alexander Karlov announced at a press conference in Yekaterinburg. ‘All in all, there are 2,000 square meters of ready housing in the region waiting for the Defense Ministry officers. This figure includes 700 square meters worth of apartments in

VTB (Foreign Trade Bank) had to direct 49.2 billion RUR, or 7.1% of its average annual lending portfolio to setting up devaluation reserves in the first quarter of 2009. This was more than the 4.8% spent in the last quarter of 2008 and is reported by the bank to be due to economic recession. The share of overdue and restructured loans in the lending portfolio’s total volume rose from 2.4% in 2008 to 4.3% in early 2009. Nevertheless, the bad debt compensation coefficient still looks rather comforting despite dropping from 147.6% last December to 118.3% in March 2009.

The next meeting related to the proposed bankruptcy of Akadem-Grad has been scheduled for September 29, 2009, the spokesperson for the court informed the UrBC reporter. The company placed its bankruptcy application with the court on June 29, 2009, claiming it was unable to fully meet its creditors’ claims as the claims amounted to more than the debtor’s assets were worth. Now Akadem-Grad owes 131,346,000 RUR to various entities, while its property has been estimated at 101,070,000 RUR.

The international rating agency demoted Alfa-Bank Ukraine’s long- and short-term Contractor Credit Rating from СС/С to SD/SD. The bank’s national scale rating was also decreased from uaCC to SD. Standard & Poor’s Credit Rating Service has also removed all these ratings from their CreditWatch list a month after they had been placed there with Negative rating outlook on July 3, 2009. ‘The Group supports Alfa-Bank Ukraine’s liquidity and market capitalization and has recently helped the bank to make an advance payment on their bond exchange deal. About a quarter of the bank’s liabilities is

Sverdlovsk Region division of the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) looked into Bank24.ru’s alleged administrative offense case. The regional public prosecution authorities had investigated the bank’s advertising materials and papers earlier and placed their files with the division so that the latter might decide whether the bank’s loan ads violated the existing legislation. The division did declare Bank24.ru’s ads violated Article 28 (part 3) and Article 5 (part 7) of the Federal Advertising Act. For example, the bank’s Outstanding Loans advertisement did not provide any information as to

Yekaterinburg-based Koltsovo Airport Customs officers halted forty pieces of jewellery made of yellow and white gold at the customs frontier green light corridor early this month. The jewellery was carried by an Armenian citizen who arrived in Yekaterinburg on a flight from Yerevan. The experts came to the conclusion that the items’ total worth can be estimated at about 2.5 million RUR. Some of the gold pieces have large-size diamonds on them. The customs’ investigative department instituted a criminal lawsuit against the unfortunate smuggler, with charges based on Article 188 (part 1) of the

‘Our sales have been plummeting since this May, with an average drop of 50% and the main reason for this being the continuing troubles involved in getting a car loan,’ ASMOTO SLAVIA car sales center Managing Director Dmitriy Usachev said to an UrBC reporter. ‘The problem is that the state subsidies scheme that helps to cover the loan interest rates is not very efficient at the moment. Of all Skoda makes, for example, only Fabia got on the program, whereas the rest of the models, even those within the required 600,000-ruble price range, still haven’t made it to the list. This is an obvious

GM-AvtoVAZ joint venture is not going to produce any Chevrolet Niva makes in August 2009, the enterprise’s press officer announced recently. ‘The assembly line has to be stopped because of our new working schedule. The workers will be compensated for the stoppage in accordance with the Russian Federation Labor Code, which means they will be getting two-thirds of their average monthly pay. As for the personnel involved in the planned jobs and managerial things, they will be paid by the hour,’ says the press officer. GM-AvtoVAZ is a JV manufacturing all-wheel drive Chevrolet Niva cars. Last

ChTPZ Group’s Chelyabinsk Tube Rolling Plant and Pervouralsk New Pipe Plant shipped 540,600 tons of tubular goods to their consumers in the first half of 2009, which was actually 38% less than the 867,800 tons delivered to them a year earlier. The company says the drops in sales have to do with a drastic fall in the demand on the domestic market (they key market, in fact). In fact, the home demand plummeted by 35% in the first half of the year compared with the six months of 2008.