The Russian Federation Federal Insurance Surveillance Service made several insurers’ licenses void temporarily and annulled the licenses of eight insurance companies, including Uralros Insurance Company that used to deal in obligatory car insurance packages. The decrees to this extent were signed on May 28, 2009 and are to come into effect on June 4, 2009, the Insurance News Agency reports. The other companies to lose their licenses are: Sochi-based Altair, Moscow-based First National Insurance Society, Moscow Region-based Universal Reinsurance Society, Moscow Region-based Avis+, Saint

Ural Airlines is going to decrease the prices for Europe-bound flights this summer. A ticket for return Yekaterinburg-Prague-Paris, Yekaterinburg-Prague-Milan, Yekaterinburg-Prague-Venice, Yekaterinburg-Prague-Rome, Yekaterinburg-Prague-Budapest, and Yekaterinburg-Prague- Ljubljana flights will only cost ?299 (excluding the fuel fee) on June 9 2009 through July 28, 2009 every Tuesday. The flights will be operated via a connection in Prague; the tickets from Prague to Paris, Milan, Venice, Rome, Ljubljana, and Budapest are offered by the carrier’s interline partners. ‘Given that plane tickets

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court sustained the claim laid by the city of Novouralsk against AMUR car factory; the plaintiff insisted on the defendant paying them over 15 million RUR for violating the terms of paying off the loan offered to the factory from the city’s budgetary funds. Novouralsk Municipal Duma decided to offer the company 15 million RUR to be paid off by March 12, 2009 and another 50 million RUR to be paid off by August 13, 2009. On June 4, 2009, Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court is going to look into another claim laid by the city of Novouralsk against AMUR car factory

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court started investigating the claim laid by Bank Severnaya Kazna against Mayak Corporation regarding the 122,032,096.43-RUR debt; the plaintiff also insists on having the corporation’s mortgaged property arrested. The preliminary hearing has been scheduled for June 3, 2009. Mayak Corporation’s President Marina Konkova said earlier that they had been trying to negotiate for debt refinancing. In fact, the bank has already placed several claims with the court, with Mayak Corporation announcing they were about to leave the housing construction market.

‘The supply for the salary-through-a-bank-card schemes exceeds the demand at the moment, since most banks are rather interested in commission-based services with a guaranteed income and zero risks,’ URSA Bank’s Vice President Alexei Sannikov said to an UrBC reporter. ‘So it happens quite often that a customer can consider the offers from a number of banks and choose the scheme that suits them best. This means the competition goes up and the service and the products improve,’ he explained.

‘The peace settlement regarding the existing debt that Sinara Pipe Plant and Kamensk Communal Housing Services Company have come to actually infringes upon the interests of other local energy suppliers,’ Sverdlovteplosbyt (subsidiary of TGK-9) says. The company promised to pay off its 174-million-ruble debt to Sinara Pipe Plant by July 1, 2009. At the same time, Kamensk Communal Housing Services Company and Sverdlovteplosbyt signed another agreement in May 2009 that was made invalid because of the changes in Kamensk Communal Housing Services Company’s ownership scheme. The company currently

This June, Rostechnadzor’s Ural Federal District’s division is going to carry out security inspections at UC RUSAL’s Bogoslovskiy smelter, UAZ smelter, Kremniy-Ural, Severouralsk Bauxite Mine, Polevskoy Cryolith Plant, SUBR-Stroy, and RUS Engineering. The safety watchdog is also planning on checking the industrial safety at a number of mining enterprises such as Zoloto Severnogo Urala, Uralasbest, Novo-Kalyinskaya Mine, and SUBR, Rostechnadzor’s press officer reports. The inspections schedule has been approved of by the head of Rostechnadzor’s Ural Federal District’s division Anatoly

‘We do not expect the automobile supplies to drop because of General Motors’ recent bankruptcy. Quite on the contrary, the supply will probably go up because Sberbank intends to offer its customers the special preferential terms loans to buy Opels. This is why we presume the demand for the cars will increase in the summer,’ says Avtoban’s Sales Manager Alexei Khorkov. ‘Our show room gets the automobiles from Moscow, where there are still a lot of last year’s cars in store. This will be enough to cover our needs for a year,’ he added. Meanwhile, General Motors is going through bankruptcy

‘Nearly all of large enterprises are cooperating with the banks in terms of salary-through-a-bank-card schemes at the moment, but the market is still far from being saturated. There is still some development potential, but this involves small and medium enterprises rather than business giants (which might only be enticed into a new bank, at best),’ URSA Bank’s Vice President Alexei Sannikov said to an UrBC reporter. ‘Speaking of SMEs, these are companies with not too many employees, such as sole traders, little limited liability companies, and public sector establishments. A lot of them are

Chelyabinsk Tube Rolling Plant and Pervouralsk New Pipe Plant (members of ChTPZ Group) as well as Uraltrubostal Trading Firm and Rimera (ChTPZ Group’s O&G maintenance division) are going to take part in the 16th international Caspian Oil & Gas 2009 exhibition in Baku, Azerbaijan on June 2-5, 2009. ChTPZ Group’s experts will be presenting their new technical solutions for the energy sector as well as displaying the potential of Pervouralsk New Pipe Plant’s finishing center for oil and gas pipelines. Once the finishing center has been launched this May, the company started manufacturing

The machine-building giant now owes 39 billion RUR to its creditors and is currently negotiating for having its debts restructured for several years, the plant’s General Director Oleg Sienko said to RBC daily. Meanwhile, Uralvagonzavod’s former GD Nikolai Malykh said at a meeting with Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Eduard Rossel and Plenipotentiary Representative of Russian Federation President in Ural Federal District Nikolai Vinnichenko in March 2009 that the plant needed about 10 billion RUR worth of loans to pay off its debts and keep up with the existing outputs. ‘Our debts are not too

Bank Severnaya Kazna’s annual general meeting in Yekaterinburg resulted in the decision to pass the dividend for 2008. Last year’s 1,573,449,450.3 RUR worth of losses will be offset with the help of undistributed profits and share premium. In the course of the AGM, the stockholders also elected the five BOD members, rejecting, however, the bank’s former Chairman of the Supervisory Board Sergey Kuroptev (who did not get a single vote). Sergey Kuroptev happens to be one Bank Severnaya Kazna’s former top managers who placed a claim against the bank with Yekaterinburg’s Kirovskiy District court,

Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) bought a 99.99% shareholding in ZAO Profit, Russia’s largest scrape metal recycler. The transaction has already been approved by MMK Board of Directors. The acquired assets comprise Profit proper and a number of its daughter enterprises dealing in scrap metal recycling as well. Historically, Profit had always fully met MMK’s scrap metal needs. For one, three-quarters of 5 million tons of scrap metal used by MMK in 2008 were actually supplied by Profit. Profit’s financial performance is now to be presented in MMK Group’s consolidated reports drawn up

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin met the heads of the region’s sports federations: Deputy Governor and President of Chelyabinsk Region Olympic Boxing Federation Evgeniy Redin, Minister for Physical Education, Sports, and Tourism Yuri Stepkin, Vice President of the All-Russian Athletics Association Georgiy Necheukhin, and Vice President of the regional judo association Dmitriy Khudyakov. The spokesperson for the Governor reports the meeting was dedicated to issues related to amateur and professional sports development in the region. The Governor said Yuri Stepkin and the other

Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) won in the Best Exporter of 2008 contest organized by the Russian Federation Ministry for Industry and Trade in order to support the local exporters. In the course of the contest, the country’s best industrial exporters were chosen in seventeen categories such as the Best Exporter to the CIS, the Most Dynamically Developing Exporter, and so on. The applications and the supporting documents were considered by the Ministry’s Foreign Economic Relations Department. MMK won the contest as Russia’s Best Exporter to the CIS among the metallurgical

‘I feel focusing on hotel construction is more reasonable just now than concentrating on housing. The thing is, the hotel estate market is doing better at the moment than the housing one, even though things are not at all splendid there,’ Accord Invest’s Ural branch’s Director Konstantin Selyanin said to an UrBC reporter. Meanwhile, Mayak Corporation has recently announced that they were leaving the housing market for the hotel one. ‘Housing estate that used to be Mayak and many other builders’ main source of income is now in grave trouble, largely because the supply does not correspond with

Starting July 1, 2009, Bank Severnaya Kazna (the asset of Alfa-Bank) is going to use some special protective commissions. For instance, they will take a monthly commission of 100 RUR/?3/$3 for managing their ACCORD accounts; the commission will be taken out on the last day of each month, in the currency identical to that of the account (provided there is some money in it). Then, there will be a commission for topping up one’s account at the bank’s cash desks, if this is the VISA Electron Instant Issue card account created to pay off the bank’s ruble loans. The only exception to this rule is

Bank Severnaya Kazna (Alfa-Bank’s asset) is going to introduce a new policy on private customers on July 1, 2009. For one, the bank will no longer render any services related to opening fixed term or demand deposits, creating a customer’s electronic signature, and issuing additional MasterCard or Visa cards for existing customers (except for Visa Instant Issue, however).

Customers might find themselves unable to use some of Alfa-Bank’s Yekaterinburg-based offices on June 11-18, 2009. According to the bank’s official website, this has to do with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in the city that week, with limitations also imposed on automobile and pedestrian travel. This is why Alfa-Bank suggests that their customers have all the transactions done at their outlets at 42 Malyshev St., 17 Gorki St., and 3 Khimikov Lane carried out in advance.

Sky Express, a low-cost airline, flew 217,661 passengers in the four months of 2009, which is 16% less than in the first four months of 2008, the carrier’s press officer reports. ‘Now that the whole Russian air industry is going trough some trouble, Sky Express’s main challenge is to keep up with last year’s passenger turnover figures and the number of operated flights,’ says the company’s General Director Marina Bukalova. In fact, the airline’s passenger turnover amounted to 305,457,726 passenger-kilometers in January-April 2009, which falls short of last year’s figures by 17.5%. In the