Head of Russian Government Vladimir Putin signed a decree giving Chelyabinsk Region’s oncologic clinic the status of a district medical center, Deputy Governor Evgeniy Redin informed Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin. The center therefore became the only one with such a status among eleven clinic located in different Russian constituencies. Another ten oncologic dispensaries are going to become regional medical centers. As a matter of fact, Chelyabinsk Region was involved in the program targeted at decreasing cancer-related mortality rate as early as last year. Now that the local

The Deputy Head of Rostechnadzor’s Ural Federal District division Alexander Kravchenko made a report on the all-round inspections of the local mining enterprises. This came to forty-two checks throughout 2008 altogether. All in all, the most noticeable trend was that the mining equipment tended to wear out faster than the companies were able to have it replaced or upgraded. Then, a lot of accidents and emergencies appeared to be caused by the workers’ lack of qualification and discipline. ‘Unfortunately, the economic crisis that broke out in October and November has led to a production

The Central Bank of Russia reports the volume of loans given by Uralfinprombank to non-state for-profit organizations for up to 30 days had dropped by 46.67% (from 111.581 million RUR to 59.5 million RUR) by February 1, 2009.

‘The economic crisis has left VIZ-Stal (as well as most metallurgical enterprises) with the plummeting demand for its produce. The drop was particularly felt in the first quarter of the year,’ says the company’s Deputy GD Sergey Makurov. ‘Our action plan provides for decreasing all the non-manufacturing costs and making our production process more efficient. Then, we are still trying to reach the optimal staff balance (as we have been doing since 2007, in fact). This actually means 2,271 to 2,200 people will probably have been made redundant by July 1, 2009. No more workers will be fired

The total volume of bank cards issued by URSA Bank in 2008 rose by 76% in comparison with a year earlier and amounted to over 1.9 million items. These figures include 695,263 international Visa and MasterCard ones (whose total amount thus comes to 1,110,734 cards); in fact, URSA Bank’s acquiring turnover reached $1.9bn last year. In addition to this, the bank issued 134,528 Zolotaya Korona cards in 2008, so the total amount of these now comes to 809,218 units. The acquiring turnover involving this type of cards reached $837m. Apart from ongoing cards launch, URSA Bank kept improving on the

Boris Dyakonov is no longer going to serve as Bank24.ru’s Chairman; he is to be succeeded by Yaroslav Alexeev of Life Group. The news has been disseminated via the bank’s official website. Still, Boris Dyakonov is going to remain the BOD member, even though he is now not on the bank’s Supervisory Board.

‘The bad debt problem is the most common one for a bank during an economic meltdown. It’s true that the amount of overdue debt on loan payments only tends to increase lately, and I think this is only the beginning,’ Home Credit & Finance Bank CEO Ivan Svitek announced at the press conference on the introduction of the bank’s Yekaterinburg branch. ‘We keep working on the cushion mechanics, so to say; for one, we’ve grown pickier in terms of whom to give money to. The borrowers who find themselves unable to pay the loan off are offered debt restructuring (if we can be positive that they

‘The international hauls are not very popular at the moment. The number of flights operated to the hot countries like Egypt and Thailand and to Europe kept going down in January and February 2009. Thus, the number of flights bound for Hurghada, Sharm El Sheikh, Bangkok, Dubai, Prague, Frankfurt, Vienna, and Budapest dropped by 7.6%, 19.3%, 30.1%, 33.8%, 17%, 19.4%, 32.1%, and 7.1%, respectively,’ Yekaterinburg-based Koltsovo Airport’s press officer said to an UrBC reporter. The only exception to this rule is destinations to Tianjin, China and Goa, India: the number of flights operated to

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court keeps looking into the claim laid by A.K. Serov Metallurgical Plant against Severskiy Pipe Works regarding the recovery of 266,871,317.54 RUR. The preliminary court session took place on December 26, 2008. The plaintiff placed the claim with the regional Arbitration Court in order to make the defendant pay the above-mentioned sum. The figures are made up of 263,785,358.48 RUR worth of the price the defendant allegedly failed to pay for the goods delivered in accordance with the agreement 734/2331 as of November 19, 2007 and 3,085,959.06 RUR worth of

‘A number of luxury brands are expected to leave the local market in the near future. In most cases, this has to do with the companies failing to invest cleverly or to assess the brand’s potential adequately prior to the market launch. Besides, there’s the problem of receivables and the loan pressure. To make matters worse, not a single Russian group is interested in buying a luxury project and developing it at the moment, since the local luxury market cannot appeal to the major players right now,’ says Anna Kochneva of Vindex Group (the representative of Givenchy, Gianfranco Ferre,

‘The article called AVS Group Builds on Wings that one of the newspapers carried recently is not quite accurate. It’s not true that AVS Group now owns a 53% shareholding in Ural Civil Aviation Plant, in spite of what the Group’s press officer was reported as saying. We have no idea of how the Group could possibly acquire the shareholding. The plant’s management was shown some papers which absolutely do not prove that the Group has any property rights over the shareholding whatsoever,’ says the plant’s Commercial Director’s Assistant Alexander Plotnikov. In the meantime, AVS Group’s PR

Sverdlovsk Region’s division of Rosprirodnadzor (the state environmental watchdog) performed a series of unscheduled inspections of local enterprises. As a result, plenty of environmental offenses were detected. For one, Baronskoye Mining failed to eliminate one of the three subsoil use regulation violations and therefore had a 3,000-ruble mine imposed on it, the spokesperson for Ural Federal District’s division of Rosprirodnadzor says. UAZ-SUAL turned out to have violated two regulations and was ordered to improve on the situation. The inspection of Uraltransmash (carried out upon the

Rus-Rating raised URSA Bank’s credit rating from BB+, Indefinite Rating Outlook, to BBB-, Stable Rating Outlook. The agency reports the Russian banks switched to the more conservative lending policies as early as the middle of 2008, as the western markets kept struggling with the economic downfall and it was quite obvious that the global problems were bound to affect the domestic market. ‘Most Russian banks (including URSA Bank) are trying to make their resource base less dependent upon the foreign loans and introducing greater interest rates on the home loan markets as well as growing

The management of Bank Severnaya Kazna’s Magnitogorsk branch (the asset of Alfa-Bank at the moment) has recently made 78 people redundant, Chelyabinsk Region Labor and Employment division reported to UrBC. In the meantime, the local office was closed for repairs on February 17, 2009.

Khanty-Mansiyskiy Bank is not planning on acquiring Yekaterinburg Municipal Bank, the company’s Deputy PR Director Vitaliy Saprykin was reported as saying. However, Khanty-Mansiyskiy Bank has earlier been rumored to consider buying an impressive shareholding in Yekaterinburg Municipal Bank. The two banks agreed in October 2008 that they would cooperate in the field of lending to entities and individuals through 2012. Their collaborative agenda included joint loans to private and business customers based in Yekaterinburg and Sverdlovsk Region as well as other parts of Russia; besides, they

Severstal denies the claims made by Uralmash Machine-Building Corporation’s GD Nazim Efendiev regarding the money the former allegedly owes to Uralmash Engineering. Efendiev actually stated at a trade union meeting that Severstal had failed to pay the company for the goods already delivered to them. ‘We cannot see why Severstal should be put on the list of companies unable to pay for the produce shipped to them. This is how things stand: the company bought a 500-ton crane from Uralmash Engineering and hasn’t paid 10 million RUR to it by now. This sum is nothing but a delayed payment (provided

Sverdlovsk Region’s division of Rosprirodnadzor (the state environmental watchdog) performed a series of unscheduled inspections of local enterprises. As a result, plenty of environmental offenses were detected. For one, Baronskoye Mining failed to eliminate one of the three subsoil use regulation violations and therefore had a 3,000-ruble mine imposed on it, the spokesperson for Ural Federal District’s division of Rosprirodnadzor says. UAZ-SUAL turned out to have violated two regulations and was ordered to improve on the situation. The inspection of Uraltransmash (carried out upon the

Rus-Rating raised URSA Bank’s credit rating from BB+, Indefinite Rating Outlook, to BBB-, Stable Rating Outlook. The agency reports the Russian banks switched to the more conservative lending policies as early as the middle of 2008, as the western markets kept struggling with the economic downfall and it was quite obvious that the global problems were bound to affect the domestic market. ‘Most Russian banks (including URSA Bank) are trying to make their resource base less dependent upon the foreign loans and introducing greater interest rates on the home loan markets as well as growing

The management of Bank Severnaya Kazna’s Magnitogorsk branch (the asset of Alfa-Bank at the moment) has recently made 78 people redundant, Chelyabinsk Region Labor and Employment division reported to UrBC. In the meantime, the local office was closed for repairs on February 17, 2009.

Khanty-Mansiyskiy Bank is not planning on acquiring Yekaterinburg Municipal Bank, the company’s Deputy PR Director Vitaliy Saprykin was reported as saying. However, Khanty-Mansiyskiy Bank has earlier been rumored to consider buying an impressive shareholding in Yekaterinburg Municipal Bank. The two banks agreed in October 2008 that they would cooperate in the field of lending to entities and individuals through 2012. Their collaborative agenda included joint loans to private and business customers based in Yekaterinburg and Sverdlovsk Region as well as other parts of Russia; besides, they