URSA Bank’s Kopilka (i.e. Money-Box) offer has recently become available throughout the entire country. ‘Any customer who gets their salary paid through our bank’s card can now put some money aside automatically – either a certain proportion of their month’s pay or a fixed sum of money each month,’ URSA Bank reports. Kopilka used to be only offered at the bank’s Siberian offices, so this is a welcome change. ‘To use the offer in the Ural offices, one needs to set up a term deposit at the bank and sign an additional agreement. In case a customer has got a deposit already, only an additional

Sverdlovsk Region Court of Arbitration keeps looking into the claim laid by Sberbank of Russia against CIT Capital regarding the 87.88-million-ruble debt and mortgaged property. Sberbank has claimed earlier that the defendant was not being very bona fide in terms of meeting its loan agreement obligations and paying off debt. The plaintiff feels that, since the company chose to go through the bankruptcy proceedings and to have its property alienated, CIT Capital currently has no means to pay its creditors back. This is why it seems essential that the security for the claim should be provided.

The spokesperson for Bank Severnaya Kazna reports none of the bank’s subsidiaries or offices will be operating on April 11 and 18, 2009. According to the official reports, this has to do with certain production necessities. The bank’s call center employees explain the company needs to solve some technical problems.

‘Metro Cash & Carry underwent an inspection by the public prosecution authorities on April 2-3, 2009. Quite a number of violations were detected in the process. Firstly, most of the store’s employees are working under harmful labor conditions, but the company does not bother to compensate them for this. Secondly, there aren’t nearly enough people employed, so the workers are forced to do two or three people’s amount of work. Besides, the labor agreement does not say what the worker’s position and working place is, which results in the employees being constantly rushed from one department

Six people entitled to Andrei Kozlov Scholarship are to present their financial projects to the scholarship committee on April 16, 2009. The scholarship was introduced by the Central Bank, the Association of Russian Banks, and URSA Bank in 2006 to support the students with excellent competence in economics and banking business. The scholarship winners are to receive a monthly allowance of 13,000 RUR. URSA Bank reports Ural State Technical University is one of the five colleges where the program is run, with the selection process conducted in March and April 2009. The university proposed

Ural Airlines was officially placed on the IOSA (operational safety audit) list on March 28, 2009. The carrier hosted six international auditors in April 2008 and was declared to have successfully passed the audit procedure on April 25, 2008. As a result, the company acquired the status of an IOSA standards-complying airline in March 2009. ‘This means that the company has proved its ability to provide safety in terms of flight operation, management system, documentation, aircraft maintenance, and much else besides,’ the spokesperson for Ural Airlines said to an UrBC reporter. An IOSA-listed

A meeting of the House of Representatives’ deputies, chaired by Lyudmila Babushkina, took place on Uralmashzavod’s premises. The meeting’s agenda was devoted to the dramatic increase in land fees and to measures aimed at fighting and preventing unemployment in Sverdlovsk Region, the region’s Legislative Assembly press officer reports. Prior to the meeting, the deputies visited the plant’s machine-assembly department and the steel-smelting shop. The tour was guided by Uralmash Machine-Building Corporation’s GD Nazim Efendiev. The executive said the outbreak of the financial crisis was keenly

‘To solve the problems our company is currently facing, a tripartite agreement needs to be signed by Egorshinksiy radio plant, Novicombank, and AvtoVAZ. This will bring more money to the plant,’ Egorshinksiy radio plant’s GD Vitaliy Elkin said at the region’s industry supporting committee meeting. ‘However, it’s not possible to sign the agreement right now because last year’s obligations haven’t been met yet. The reason for this is that our salary accounts have been arrested and we need to pay the debt and the fines imposed on those accounts. The sum in question is only 6 million RUR, but the

‘Klyuchevsk Ferrous Alloys Works isn’t always looked at sympathetically when trying to cope with its problems. For one, we still haven’t been able to reach an agreement with TGK-9. Any delay in payment by seven or ten days leads to a power cutoff warning, and the company’s employees arrive on our premises four days later. This is an extremely complicated issue,’ President of Russian Special Alloys Management Company Vyacheslav Grigoriev announced in the course of the region’s industry supporting committee meeting. ‘We all know that Klyuchevsk Ferrous Alloys Works is an environmentally

Alfa-Bank stopped offering its customers a number of services formerly rendered by Bank Severnaya Kazna. According to the spokesperson for the bank, after Bank Severnaya Kazna’s integration into Alfa-Bank was completed on April 3, 2009, the bank will no longer be signing any new acquiring agreements or providing bank cards for the companies to pay salaries to employees; nor will the legal entities be able to use e-banking any more.

The net profit of Uralsvyazinform, the mobile and landline operator went down by 27.3% last year (from 3,685,300,000 RUR in 2007 to 2,677,900,000 RUR in 2008). The company’s sales revenues dropped by 17.6% (from 8,649,300,000 RUR in 2007 to 7,124,600,000 RUR in 2008), while its pre-tax profit plummeted by 25.2% (from 5,546,400,000 RUR in 2007 to 4,146,400,000 RUR in 2008). At the same time, the company’s expenses rose by 9.7% (from 30,503,400,000 RUR in 2007 to 33,456,400,000 RUR in 2008), with less money spent on personnel and agents’ fees and more money spent on capital consumption,

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin spoke to his deputies and ministers about the ways of helping the victims of Korkinskaya mine methane ignition accident. According to the Minister for Radiation and Environmental Safety, all the necessary measures have already been taken: two heavily hurt miners have been transferred to Chelyabinsk burn center, while those less seriously wounded received medical assistance as well. The mine is now operating as usual, while an ad hoc committee is looking into the causes of the ignition. In addition to discussing the mining accident, the Governor

After Alfa-Bank has closed down the customer forum on Bank Severnaya Kazna’s official website, the bank’s clients set up a new online communication platform, a number of Yekaterinburg Internet forums report. The new forum can be found at Bank Severnaya Kazna’s official website’s forum stopped operating on April 2, 2009. According to the bank’s official report, the decision was taken ‘in order to make the bank-customer communication more systematic.’ ‘On the one hand, the forum kept getting increasingly fewer visitors; on the other hand, more visitors checked out our Q&A section,’ Bank

The Hellenic Republic’s visa center is going to start operating in Yekaterinburg this April, the Ambassador of Greece to Russia informed Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Eduard Rossel, the spokesperson for the Governor reports. Meanwhile, Minister of Tourism of Greece Kostas Markopulos announced at a press conference in Moscow that thanks to a new visa-issuing system launched in September 2008 the whole procedure would only take forty-eight hours. The Ambassador says the Greek authorities are currently considering the idea of setting up the Republic’s Consulate General in Yekaterinburg.

Uralros Insurance Company will probably get expelled from the Russian Union of Automobile Insurers after Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court has sustained the claim laid by the Union against Uralros regarding the membership fees. In fact, Uralros Insurance Company never paid its membership fee for the third quarter of 2008 and failed to respond to the Union management’s inquiries. At the end of the day, the insurance company’s GD announced to the Union’s representative that he was not at all willing to pay the fees, so Uralros was put on the ‘To Be Expelled’ list. Despite the defendant’s

Bank Severnaya Kazna’s equipment is to undergo some technical upgrades from 6.30 AM to 8 AM on April 2, 2009 (local time). This means that the bank’s cards will not get serviced at the bank’s ATMs or cash desks as well as at the other banks’ ATMs and cash desks as well as POS terminals during that period of time. The cards won’t be handled by the Internet Bank system for the time being either. Besides, no other banks’ cards will be accepted at Bank Severnaya Kazna’s ATMs and terminals for these several hours.

The net profit of Severskiy Pipe Works amounted to 1.4 billion RUR last year (in accordance with the Russian accounting standards). This figure falls short of the one for 2007 by 1.53 billion RUR, TMK’s press officer reports. In the meantime, TMK’s net loss reached 9 billion RUR in 2008 in comparison with the 19.2-billion-ruble net profit in 2007 (in accordance with the Russian accounting standards).

Pipe Metallurgical Company (TMK) came up with its enterprises’ financial performance report for 2008, compiled in accordance with the Russian accounting standards. TMK’s net loss reached 9 billion RUR in 2008 in comparison with the 19.2-billion-ruble net profit in 2007 (in accordance with the Russian accounting standards). The company’s net loss amounted to 7.4 billion RUR in the last quarter of 2008 compared with the net profit of 11.4 billion RUR a year earlier. The company reports last year’s losses have to do with the dropping share price of TMK’s daughter enterprises and the need to

‘We’ve already sent about a dozen letters to METRO Cash & Carry’s management, including both the Regional Manager of Store 30 and the General Director for Russia; two of these letters contained a detailed action plan that could help them cope with the problem. However, none of our letters have been replied to,’ Chairman of Yekaterinburg Trade Networks trade union Alexander Brusnitsyn said to an UrBC reporter. In the meantime, METRO Cash & Carry’s Yekaterinburg branch set up a trade union (a member of the Russian Federation Trade Union’s local division) on March 5, 2009. A day later,

The net loss of Novolipetsk Iron & Steel Works (NLMK) reached $481m in the last quarter of 2008, while its net profit dropped by 110.8% against the third quarter of 2008, NLMK’s financial report for 2008 states. The enterprise’s net debt amounted to $841.5 million on December 31, 2008, while the available monetary resources totaled to $2.16bn and the financial debt to $3bn (including $1.1bn worth of short-term debts and $1.9bn of long-term ones). NLMK’s accounts receivable came to $1.488bn, which fell short of the figures for 2007 by 12%. NLMK says their losses have been brought about by