Alisher Usmanov’s Metalloinvest Holding must pay the full sum for the license entitling the company to the development of Russia’s largest Udokanskoye copper deposit in Zabaikalskiy Territory by June 2009, RIA Novosti quoted Anatoly Ledovskikh (head of the Federal Subsoil Resources Agency) as saying. ‘The deadline for the payment is the month of June,’ he said. According to Ledovskikh, the company has already promised to pay the sum in full. ‘In case they fail to do so, they will lose the five billion RUR one has to pay as the down installment for the license,’ RIA Novosti quotes.

The Russian Federation Minister of Defense Anatoly Serdyukov arrived at Shagol military airfield last night, to be greeted by Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin and head of the Urals and Volga Military District Arkadiy Bakhin. The officials then went to Chebarkul and Miass to take a look at Chebarkul division, Ural car factory, and GRTs. According to the spokesperson for the Governor, Petr Sumin and Anatoly Serdyukov also spoke about the state defense contracts, financing of Chelyabinsk Region-based defense enterprises, and providing the military with the housing they need.

Following the order issued by Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Eduard Rossel, the region’s Deputy Minister for International and Foreign Economic Relations Boris Shipitsin is no longer in office, the spokesperson for the Ministry reports. Boris Shipitsin resigned of his own accord because he wished to retire. The official’s length of state service comes to thirty-eight years.

Sverdlovsk Region is an industrially developed region focused on metallurgy and machine-building, 60% of which happen to be export-oriented. Unfortunately, the demand for the region’s produce has dropped, so have the prices, all of which has resulted in trouble for this area,’ Director of the State Employment Service’s Sverdlovsk Region Department Vyacheslav Krivel admitted at a press conference. ‘I just don’t like to scare the people off by enumerating all the enterprises that have had to make their workers redundant. I do know, however, that things are hard at Uralmashzavod at the moment.

‘A customer used to receive a car they had bought within five days of the purchase, but now the dealers are beginning to take their time, sometimes making the wait period last up to a month. This is the case with Autoland, for instance,’ Europlan’s Business Development Director Alexander Mikhailov was reported as saying to Vedomosti. ‘The company has extended the official wait for the paid-for cars to thirty days,’ says Autoland-Siberia’s Konstantin Kudryavtsev. ‘This particular dealer is having some difficulty servicing its own debts, as Baltiyskiy Bank laid a claim against them in March.

URSA Bank’s shareholders gathered at the annual general meeting on May 8, 2009 to vote for the bank’s merger with MDM-Bank and MDM Banking Holding. This proposal received 99.64% of votes. In addition to taking this decision, the stockholders also approved of raising URSA Bank’s authorized capital through an issue of ordinary shares and the eighth-type preference shares that are to be converted from MDM-Bank and MDM Banking Holding’s ones. According to the bank’s press officer, the new, enlarged bank’s next challenge will be to get the company registered by the Bank of Russia. ‘The new bank is

Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Eduard Rossel met the General Director of Uralvagonzavod (the Nizhniy Tagil-based industrial giant) Oleg Sienko. The business executive explained that the global financial crisis had hit the enterprise really hard, with the company now owing about 39 billion RUR to its creditors (including .65 billion RUR worth of unpaid heating and electricity bills). At the same time, Uralvagonzavod did manage to pay all of its taxes, Sienko proudly noted. Head of Sverdlovsk Region Government Viktor Koksharov and his first deputy and Minister for Industry and Science Anatoly

Some of Gazpromneft-Ural’s shareholders have increased their existing holdings through the issuer’s additional share issue. As a result, Richard Enterprises S.A. raised its share from 14.5% to 15% of Gazpromneft-Ural’s common stock, while Gregory Trading S.A’s shareholding rose from 14.8% to 15.3%.

Fitch Ratings, the international rating agency, put Evraz Group SA’s long-term Issuer Default Rating (BB) and its priority unsecured rating (BB) on the Negative Rating Watch recently. At the same time, Mastercroft Limited's long-term Issuer Default Rating (BB) has also been placed on this list. As it happens, Mastercroft is Evraz’s daughter enterprise. Both companies’ short-term Issuer Default Ratings have been affirmed at B. The Negative Rating Watch indicates that Fitch is rather worried about the company’s overall debt/EBITDA and net debt/EBITDA ratios not keeping up with the level

The Federal Financial Marker Service decided to annul the license of Neva Financial & Industrial Group. The license used to entitle the company to performing brokerage and dealing operations as well as security transactions. The decision had to be taken because of Neva’s numerous violations of the Russian securities legislation throughout one year. These offenses involved violations of the Federal Financial Marker Service’s regulations. What is more, the Service has also canceled the qualification certificates issued to the company’s General Director Vitaliy Davidovitch and General

The value of Bank Severnaya Kazna’s assets dropped by 10.3% in April 2009, that is, from 240,440,238,000 RUR on April 1, 2009 to 236,283,721,000 RUR on May 1, 2009. The company reports this decrease has been brought about by the shrinking customer accounts and cutting back on their lending portfolio.

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin discussed the ways of increasing security of the future underground with the local anti-terrorist committee. The General Director of ChelyabMetroStroy Konstantin Abramchuk said as soon as the construction of the subway began in 2000, they made every effort to ensure its anti-terrorist safety. At the moment, there are two ways of protecting the subway and its future users: keeping an eye on the construction site by ChelyabMetroStroy’s security service (with four CCTV cameras, weekly raids and checks, and entry passes) and making sure the

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court held a preliminary hearing of the claim laid by Bank Severnaya Kazna’s minority shareholder Oksana Shishkina against Bank Severnaya Kazna and Alfa-Bank. The plaintiff insisted on Alfa-Bank making Bank Severnaya Kazna go through with the public buy-out offer. In the end, the court proceedings were postponed until May 14, 2009. Shishkina feels Alfa-Bank must buy her 1,276,500 shares at the highest price offered to the other stockholders. According to the plaintiff’s claim, Bank Severnaya Kazna must call a BOD meeting and make its recommendations to the

Public Services & Utilities Support Fund, the state corporation, canceled the general agreement they had with Khanty-Mansiyskiy Bank regarding the bank deposits, the spokesperson for the fund reports. The decision was taken because of Standard & Poor's demoting the bank’s credit rating down to В+ on April 21, 2009. Now this rating does not meet the criteria the Russian banks have to meet in order to be allowed to accept the fund’s reserves in the form of deposits.

SMU Uralmash’s Board of Directors decided in the course of their recent meeting that the stockholders should be advised to pass the dividend for 2008. The stockholders themselves are to gather at the annual general meeting on June 25, 2009. The other points on the agenda have to do with electing the new BOD and approving of the annual report.

The 20,000 employees of Uralvagonzavod who have been made redundant recently are to increase the number of Nizhniy Tagil’s unemployed to 30,000 people. The enterprise’s GD Oleg Sienko signed the decree making 20,000 workers temporarily redundant for the period of May 4-29, 2009. In the meantime, the local unemployment figures are still on the rise: prior to these layoffs, there were 10,479 jobless in the city, which comes to 5.1% of the working age population.

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin directed an additional 26 million RUR to compensating the expenses of public transport entities (which have offered a 50% fare discount to pensioners traveling to the countryside by bus). According to the spokesperson for the Governor, the money is to be distributed among the transport organizations of the region’s cities and towns to make sure the retirees can enjoy the discount on May 1, 2009-October 15, 2009. 4 million RUR was allotted to the city of Chelyabinsk for this purpose in May, so the compensation comes to 30 million RUR altogether, 20

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court is going to look into the claim laid by Bank Severnaya Kazna minority shareholder Oksana Shishkina against Bank Severnaya Kazna and Alfa-Bank regarding Alfa-Bank’s obligation to launch a public buy-out offer on Bank Severnaya Kazna shares. Shishkina believes Alfa-Bank must buy her shareholding (1,276,500 shares) at the highest price offered to the other stockholders. She insists on Bank Severnaya Kazna calling up a BOD meeting to make sure the BOD recommends this to the shareholders. The plaintiff also insists on having 85.021% of the bank’s registered

Yekaterinburg’s Kirovskiy district’s investigative authorities instituted criminal proceedings (with charges based on Article 146 (part 2) of the Russian Federation Criminal Code, that is, violation of author’s rights) against a local dweller. The case has been placed with the court, the spokesperson for the authorities report. The inquiry team believes the thirty-seven-year-old owner of an apartment in Mamin-Sibiryak St. was using the pirated Russian versions of Microsoft Windows Professional SP3, Microsoft Office 2007, and other software programs copyrighted by Microsoft. The total damage

Following the order issued by the head of Rostourism Anatoly Yarochkin, over 655 tour operators have been excluded from the federal register after they failed to provide any data on their financial guarantees for the new term, the spokesperson for Roustourism (the federal tourist agency) reports. There is a number of Yekaterinburg-based companies on this list: Inturline-99, TBK Inturline, Ural Tourist Company, Mega Tour, Orange Tour, Orange Tour Region, Finnex-tour, Mir-Voyage, Cleo Tur, Alexandria, Piligrim, Reise, Inform-Tour, Southern Cross-Yekaterinburg, Soglasiye-Ek, Kurortniy Mir,