Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin had a meeting with the regional trade union committee in order to look into the crisis-defying measures taken by both the federal and regional authorities. According to the spokesperson for the Governor, Petr Sumin spoke about the importance of trade unions in overcoming the global financial crisis. ‘The most important thing at the moment is to protect the people, that is, workers, from the social hardships, and to preserve the unique human potential. The trade unions are now the only well-structured and efficient social force within this country’s

‘We’ve offered our Andrei Kozlov scholarship to Yekaterinburg students for the second time this year. I see this as a trend, actually, and I am positive that the scholarship will be available to the worthiest finalists next year as well, in spite of the current crisis. We have been doing this (and intend to go on) because the arriving generation of managers and finance experts will be useful to both URSA Bank and the entire country,’ URSA Bank’s acting President Vadim Manin announced during the final selection procedure at Ural State Technical University in Yekaterinburg. The winners entitled

379 counterfeited warrants of execution regarding the money some debtors allegedly have to pay Home Credit & Finance Bank have been found in the offices of Sverdlovsk Region’s Court Officers Service recently, the spokesperson for the Service reports. All of these papers have allegedly been issued by a Tomsk-based court’s Justice of the Peace, but it was detected in the course of an investigation that the court never produced any of the documents at all. It was also revealed that the claims were placed with the court officers on behalf of Ilya Moskvichev, a Chelyabinsk-based employee of a

Bank Monetniy Dom’s BOD decided to hold the annual general meeting on May 28, 2009. The stockholders are to approve of the annual report and the year’s statement of affairs as well as the profit and loss statement for 2008; in addition, they are to settle the issues of profit distribution and the payment of dividends. One more point on the meeting’s agenda has to do with the quantity of BOD members and electing these members, the review board, and the auditor.

The Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development was given a confirmation of ?7m worth of credit lines in the course of negotiating with VTB Bank Deutschland AG Frankfurt/Main, Germany. The bank’s representatives explain this is the greatest limit meant for handling foreign LCs ever offered to any Ural bank by a partner bank. VTB Bank Deutschland has also expressed an interest in financing the UBRD’s trade transactions. ‘Thanks to the parties’ agreement, the regional enterprises will reach the new heights in terms of foreign trade; our customers will be entitled to cheaper loan resources due

Alfa-Bank has given the money back to the victims of a recent Alfa-Click system swindle, Vedomosti quoted the bank’s customers as saying. According to the newspaper, a number of fraudsters managed to illegally gain access to the bank customers’ cell phone numbers at the end of March 2009. Now these numbers are used by Alfa-Bank to send disposable passwords needed for Internet-Bank transactions, so the offenders used these one-time passwords to transfer a certain sum of money into a certain customer’s account. Vedomosti says one victim still hasn’t been paid, so the dissatisfied customer is

Kontur-Extern (the system developed by Yekaterinburg-based SKB-Kontur) won the third prize in the Brand Of The Year/EFFIE 2008 contest in the High-Tech Goods & Services category. The first and the second prizes were awarded to Rostelecom and Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd’s Samsung X360 laptops. The Brand Of The Year/EFFIE annual contest has been held since 1998, awarding prizes to the most successful brand-building projects on the domestic market. The Russian national Brand Of The Year award joined EFFIE, the international prize awarded to marketing experts in thirty-thee different

‘Under the current crisis, a company’s intangible assets and reputation are highly prone to ‘erosion’: the trust level drops really low on the financial mediation market. Both individuals and businesses choose to handle the cash immediately,’ says General Director of Blagodat Securities Investment Company Vsevolod Chaschin. ‘The crisis makes people cut down on their goodwill expenses. A company’s management has to look at each of its assets and decide if it’s functional or not. In case of machinery, the outgoings obviously cannot be reduced or halted, whereas the intangible assets are quite

Pipe Metallurgical Company (TMK) shipped 581,000 tons of steel pipes to its consumers in the first quarter of 2009. This is 17.8% less than a year earlier. ‘The decrease in shipments primarily has to do with the market’s shrinking demand; this is particularly true of the industrial pipe market. For one, the domestic market’s volume has decreased by 33% recently,’ the spokesperson for the company explains.

An equipment breakdown leading to the complete destruction of the boiler occurred at Nizhniy Tagil-based Uralhimplast’s ion exchanger department at 11.10 AM on April 15, 2009, Sverdlovsk Region’s division of the Department of Emergencies reports. Both the fire and the possible discharge of harmful substances were avoided, but four people got injured in the accident. All of them have been taken to hospital and are believed to have got some fractures. ‘An ad hoc committee is looking into the reasons of the explosion at the scene of the accident at the moment. The cause of the accident has not

‘Machine-building is the only branch of industry involved in the high-value-added production, and it is this branch that has the greatest labor productivity growth reserves. Even so, we still haven’t managed to raise the branch’s share in Sverdlovsk Region’s industrial structure. At the moment, it only comes to 20%,’ the region’s Minister for Industry and Science Anatoly Gredin announced at the region’s major enterprises’ chief designers meeting. ‘Then, we cannot boast any efficient machine-building sector structure. There are 220 industrial SMEs and 140 small businesses in Sverdlovsk Region

‘There are plenty of companies trying to spend less on their goodwill assets at the time of a crisis. I believe, however, that one shouldn’t try to save a little money on one’s reputation despite the hard times,’ Eurogreen Investment and Finance Company’s GD Evgeniy Kostarev said to an UrBC reporter. ‘It might be hard to find the same sums provided for the reputation expenses in the past; nevertheless, spending on image advertising is always worth its while, otherwise the company might simply find itself completely forgotten by the market,’ he warned.

‘Yekaterinburg is to face the educational workers’ salary reform over the next three years. This might lead to some unproductive consequences when budget deficit keeps increasing,’ Head of Municipal Education Administration Evgeniya Umnikova announced at Yekaterinburg Municipal Duma’s third meeting. ‘Sverdlovsk Region Government’s decree makes it obligatory to have no fewer than twenty-five students in every classroom and to make sure the minimum wage comes to at least 4,300 RUR; in addition, the teacher/non-teaching staff salary ratio has to come to 70/30 now, and there has to be set up a

Sverdlovsk Region’s public prosecution authorities detected over 2,000 budgetary legislation violations in 2008; this was announced at the authorities’ budgetary compliance committee meeting. As a result, 128 and 635 people have had to face administrative and disciplinary liability, respectively, on the basis of 370 orders issued by the public prosecutors. In addition, a dozen criminal lawsuits have been instituted. What is more, the prosecutors placed 160 protests against illegitimate enactments with the authorities and issued 135 warnings; then, 579 claims were placed with the courts.

‘Our Dodge, Jeep, and Chrysler sales have dropped by about 70% in the first quarter of 2009 compared with a year earlier. This can be explained by the ongoing financial crisis, first of all, so the customers’ paying capacity has decreased, and then, there are certain problems in the way the manufacturers promote their cars on the market,’ says Asmoto car show’s Sales Manager Evgeniy Vasilyev. ‘We’ve got about fifteen cars made in 2007 in store at the moment, and we are forced to sell them with a discount, that is, at a sacrifice. However, the manufacturing companies are willing to make up for

URSA Bank’s balance sheet profit came to .3 billion RUR in the first quarter of 2009, while the company’s own funds were estimated at 26.6 billion RUR on April 1, 2009, which was .3% less than on January 1, 2009. The bank’s capital adequacy came to 16.8%, which is 1.6 times more than what is required by the Central Bank of Russia. In addition, URSA Bank’s net assets reached 207.8 billion RUR in January-March 2009, thus going down by 2.6% since the beginning of the year. Their liquid assets amounted to 40.6 billion RUR. The bank had managed to attract 57.9 billion RUR worth of customer

Thirteen of Metcombank’s customers have already used their right to pay off their mortgage with the help of the so-called maternity money – the 299,000 RUR the state pays a mother for her second child and/or consecutive children. These are five borrowers based in Krasnoturinsk, five people from Kamensk Uralskiy, and three Yekaterinburg dwellers, the spokesperson for the bank reports. In addition, Metcombank gives its customers a chance to have their loan payments restructured, whereas most other banks only ask for paying one’s debt off in advance. ‘We chose to help our customers, as we

‘It could be that the current stock market uprising is a false start, since this increase actually looks a little threatening. There are no economic grounds for the improvements at the moment, so the market is fed by rumors and gossip, like the one about the U.S. allegedly planning to buy the ‘infected’ assets. The Russian stock market has no fundamental support whatsoever, so there is no good reason for it to be growing now,’ Eurogreen Investment & Finance Company’s GD Evgeniy Kostarev said to an UrBC reporter. ‘I think the market will drop a little again,’ he added. In the meantime, the

Sberbank’s Ural branch came up with a new ‘overnight’ offer for its business customers recently. ‘The offer means a company can deposit its rubles, dollars, or euros at the bank for one to six days and get a guaranteed income at the rates comparable with those of the interbank market,’ the bank’s press officer explained to UrBC. ‘One general agreement can cover several deals valid for various periods and involving various sums. A customer has to deposit at least 50 million RUR, $1m, or ?1m, the upper limit is to be agreed upon with the bank’s representative. The interest rate is determined

Yekaterinburg’s existing home prices were stable on March 10 through April 7, 2009, with the average price reaching 57,860 RUR per square meter of housing on April 7, 2009, which was 1.75% less than four weeks earlier. In certain parts of the city, however, the prices dropped by 1.35% to 2.47%, with the weekly price fluctuations ranging between +.32% and -.67%,’ reports President of Ural Chamber of Real Estate Mikhail Davy. The Chamber’s forecast is that the housing market isn’t going to experience any significant changes in the nearest future, with the average housing prices only changing