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

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‘The Federal Migration Service’s Sverdlovsk Region division’s data on the number of foreign workers entering the region are incomplete, since the only information they get comes from Koltsovo Airport of Yekaterinburg. According to the data I have, the number of foreign workers coming t o the region has halved since the beginning of the year. Most of the workers, who went home upon the end of the season, are now waiting for things to get more certain: it’s a well-known fact that the future of the region’s numerous construction projects is dubious at the moment,’ the leader of Yekaterinburg’s

‘We understand that there might be little demand for our clothes at the time of a crisis. Yet our Yekaterinburg boutique has always been seen as a long-term investment, so we were prepared for this. Besides, we are positive that things will get back to normal and we will be a success. We expect to keep the excitement about the brand up by all sorts of shows and presentations,’ Pierre De Maigret, General Manager at Christian Dior Russia, announced at the opening of their Christian Dior boutique in Yekaterinburg. In the meantime, the ongoing crisis has already forced some luxury brands to leave

Uralfinprombank’s BOD Chairman Ildar Gubayev suggested that the bank’s stockholders buy out their shareholdings. The proposed price comes to 12 RUR per registered uncertified common share; the decision has to be made within seventy days of the offer. At the moment, Gubayev and his affiliates are reported to have 65.68% of the bank’s shares.

Moscow Court of Arbitration rejected the claims laid by Koltsovo Airport of Yekaterinburg and ruled in favor of the Federal Antimonopoly Service’s decision. The Service declared on September 19, 2008 that the airport had violated Article 10 of the federal bill on the protection of competition (namely, the ban on abuse of dominance) by avoiding signing an agreement with no ground for it. Since the airport was willing to eliminate this violation, no orders were issued, but it was still possible to take legal action, with the administrative charge laid on the basis of Article 14.31 of the

According to RBC.Rating, SKB-Bank crowns Sverdlovsk Region-based banks’ success rating in terms of entities’ deposit volume, consumer lending volume, lending portfolio, and the volume of loans offered to entities. ‘What is more, the bank is one of the best in the area in terms of private individuals’ investment and asset growth dynamics,’ says the bank’s press officer. In addition, SKB-Bank is featured in many of the country’s Top 50 bank ratings. The only Russia’s Top 100 Banks list the bank did not get on was the one compiled on the basis of loan loss.

‘The officers of Yekaterinburg’s Leninskiy District division of Department of Internal Affairs did some drilling within the area right next to our bank’s premises on March 4, 2009. About forty people were involved in the procedure altogether, and it took them around thirty minutes to set the ‘hostages’ free,’ Security Director of Bank Société Générale Vostok’s Yekaterinburg branch Igor Kochegarov said to an UrBC reporter. Meanwhile, a great deal of local dwellers could see a group of militiamen accompanying a few handcuffed people into the car downtown on that same day. All this was happening

The value of Yekaterinburg Municipal Bank’s assets dropped by 14.42% in February 2009, that is, from 6.811 billion RUR on February 1, 2009 to 5.829 billion RUR on March 1, 2009.

Bank24.ru keeps oppressing its own customers through a number of unfriendly policies. For one, the bank’s new tariff schemes provide for a 10% fine in case a customer wants to cash their deposit in before the end of the deposit period. Since charging such a fee directly is actually illegitimate and violates the Russian Federation Civil Code, Bank24.ru appears to have found a way out by introducing a ‘hidden commission’. This means that upon signing a deposit agreement, a customer also has to sign an additional contract which states that, in case the customer chooses to get the money back

The value of Uralfinprombank’s assets went down by 900.068 million RUR, or 16.7%, that is, from 5,385,381,000 RUR on February 1, 2009 to 4,485,513,000 RUR on March 1, 2009. The issuer explains the decrease in asset value has to do with transferring the sums listed under last year’s Fiscal Effect rubric into the last year’s Profit one.

Bank Severnaya Kazna’s assets went down by 526.743 million RUR (from 36,039,329,000 RUR to 35,512,586,000 RUR) in February 2009. These data are available from TRUST’s Trust interactive: Russian banks report.

‘We feel the state might create and stimulate the demand for certain sectors’ produce or for certain projects through a balanced and efficient policy. This is why, in our opinion, the government should focus on the building industry for the time being, which we see as the efforts aimed at developing the infrastructural sector,’ said Delovaya Rossiya Chairman Boris Titov at a Stolypin Club meeting. ‘Some large-scale projects might look as both appealing and well-calculated long-term investments. Some of them are only appealing, like the bridge to Russkiy Island, for instance, since the

A number of UC RUSAL’s Sverdlovsk Region-based Ural smelter will probably get transferred to Khakasia, even though the original idea consisted in moving them to the company’s smelter located in Krasnoyarsk. ‘It’s true that we did plan to have our people transferred to Krasnoyarsk, but the smelter there is also experiencing some problems at the moment, and some people are being made redundant. We’ve reached an agreement with our branch in Sayanogorsk, Khakasia, where a new plant is to open in the spring. A portion of Ural smelter’s employees might end up working there in May,’ the enterprise’s

URSA Bank had bought out over $274m worth of its Eurobonds by March 1, 2009. The company started out with the process at the end of 2008, announcing that the bank was prepared to buy the bonds from four of its issues on both the pubic market and through private transactions. The first $351m-bond issue is to be retired in May 2009, the second one, with face value of 4.5 billion Hungarian forints, is to be retired in September 2009, the ?400m is to be retired in May 2010, and the last ?300m one is to be retired in November 2011. ‘We are buying out our own bonds despite the market’s current

‘The State Retirement Fund undergoes various inspections on a regular basis, including those carried out by the prosecution authorities. The fund makes the pension payments either through a bank or by post, depending on each particular retiree’s preferences. All of the fund’s intermediaries are for-profit organizations. So, first, the money was transferred to the Russian Post; then, the post placed the money with Bank VEFK-Ural,’ the Russian Federation Retirement Fund’s Sverdlovsk Region division CEO Sergey Dubinkin said in the course of a recent press conference in Yekaterinburg. In the

The state-run Vnesheconombank is to offer Koltsovo Airport of Yekaterinburg a 2.25-billion-ruble loan to help the airport complete the international airways terminal and the railway platform as well as to pay off the short-term debts. The bank was officially reported to have allocated 1.4 billion RUR for loan payments, while the total sum of the transaction comes to over 5.17 billion RUR (this covers the credit line’s volume, the interest for using the loan, and the loan commission).

Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) put the development of its oxygen facilities on the company’s priority projects list. According to the enterprise’s PR Department, their oxygen shop’s primary consumers (the blast furnace shop, the steel-smelting shop, and the oxygen converter shop) were forced to cut down dramatically on their outputs at the end of last year. The company was then capable of producing 45,000 cubic meters of oxygen an hour, whereas the equipment’s estimated capacity came to as many as 270,000-280,000 cubic meters an hour. Only four out of ten machines were in actual

Standard & Poor’s, the rating agency, placed Russian landline operator Uralsvyazinform’s long-term credit rating (namely, BB-) on the CreditWatch list, with Negative Rating Outlook. ‘This has reflected our concerns over the way the company’s liquid assets are managed; we actually feel that it’s a bit too harsh,’ says Standard & Poor’s analyst Alexander Gryaznov. ‘We believe the operator is going to retire its three-billion-ruble bond issue on time at the end of March using the remainder of the available money and short-term credit lines. However, we did expect the company to refinance