This February and March, Chelyabinsk Tube-Rolling Plant (ChTPZ, part of ChTPZ Group) is going to complete an order for a number of large-diameter pipes placed by Gazprom; the pipes are needed to repair and maintain some major pipelines (Valdai-Pskov-Riga, Kipen-Gatchina, Gryazovets-Leningrad I, and Torzhok-Minsk-Ivatsevitchi-2 ones). The 530-, 720-, 1,020-, and 1,220-millimeter pipes with 7 to 16.7 millimeter wall width and a three-layer anti-corrosion polyethylene coating are made of 17G1S-U 13G1S-U steel in accordance with TU 14-3-1270-2001 and TU 14-158-153-2005 standards. These LDPs are

Interfax-CEA (Center for Economic Analysis) came up with its Interfax 100 ranking featuring six Ural banks with the largest asset volume. Three of those are based in Tyumen Region, another three are located in Sverdlovsk Region. SKB-Bank was rated as Russia’s 73d largest bank in terms of asset volume in 2008, with the assets growing by 32.9% compared with 2007; besides, the bank was promoted by four positions in last year’s rating compared with 2007. As for the beginning of 2009, all of the bank’s development indicators keep rising dynamically. For one, SKB-Bank’s capital increased by 42% in

Hot-rolling Mill 2500 was re-launched at Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works’ (MMK) sheet rolling plant a short while ago. A little earlier, the company had to stop using the mill for the time being because of the dropping hot roll products’ output. The enterprise only relied on the adjustage for some time, that is, two crosscutting units were used for sheet production. What MMK was mainly interested in was keeping the staff employed, so over two hundred workers were directed to Mill 500 construction site, and some of the employees underwent internship at the hot-rolling Mill 2000 shop. The

According to the Central Bank of Russia, volume of loans given by Perviy Respublikanskiy Bank to non-state for-profit organizations despite overdraft dropped by 34.27% (from 40.702 million RUR to 26.751 million RUR) by January 1, 2009.

Koltsovo Airport of Yekaterinburg looked into its achievements in January 2009. As it happens, the company has serviced 15.9% fewer passengers this January compared to January 2008, that is, 134,035 people altogether, of whom 42,314 people traveled internationally, 80,353 passengers used various domestic flights, and 11,368 people bought tickets for flights operated within the CIS. This was, respectively, 7.2%, 19.4%, and 16.3% less than a year earlier. In addition to rendering its services to passengers, the airport handled 665.86 tons of cargo and mail in January 2009 (which was 24.4% less

‘We cannot meet our deadlines with The Industrial Urals-The Polar Urals (a project on the industrial development of the Urals’ north) because some of the tasks laid out in the general plan have been skipped and some of them have been put off until later. We’ll only be able to use 80% of the federal budget subsidies, even though we did use of all the financing provided by the local budgets. This slowing down has to do with the fact that getting the licenses, drawing up the design documents, etc. was only completed way after the deadline,’ Alexei Melgunov (one of the department heads at A. P.

‘About 14,000 people are going to get released from Sverdlovsk Region’s prisons this year; most of these people got some rather long prison terms back in the mid-nineties. Setting free the people who had been sentenced for felonies and capital offenses en masse is bound to put the population’s safety in jeopardy. There are two kinds of convicts imprisoned in the nineties, actually, and each of the two kinds stands for specific kinds of risks,’ says Europe-Asia Information and Consulting Center’s GD Oleg Borisov ‘The first category comprises the members of organized crime groups. Some people

The Central Bank of Russia reports volume of loans given by Koltso Urala Commercial Bank to non-state for-profit organizations for 31 days to 90 days plummeted by 100% (from 13.332 million RUR to zero) by January 1, 2009.

The company’s third oxygen converter was launched at Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works’ (MMK) LD plant recently. The machine was subjected to serious repairs at the end of October 2008, with MMK’s daughter enterprises dealing in electrical and mechanical repairs acting as the general contractors for the project. The mechanical improvements actually included replacing the converter’s carrying ring and its frame. By the end of January 2009, the overhaul had already been completed. As a matter of fact, the company’s second converter underwent similar upgrading last summer; this time, however,

‘Mr. Gavriolvskiy simply deceived the Governor and all those also present at the moment. He said that we had been procrastinating the solution for two years, but, as it turned out at today’s meeting, this isn’t true. We only received his application in October 2008,’ the Minister for State Property Management Alexei Molotkov announced at a press conference in Yekaterinburg. The Minister actually referred to the report Andrei Gavrilovskiy (who is currently putting up the third section of Antey Business Center in Yekaterinburg) made at a recent meeting chaired by the Governor of Sverdlovsk

Sverdlovsk Region’s division of Federal Antimonopoly Service found Uralsib’s Yekaterinburg branch guilty of an administrative violation and imposed a 40,000-ruble fine on the offender, the spokesperson for the Service’s regional division reports. Sverdlovsk Region’s division of Federal Antimonopoly Service placed its claim against Uralsib with the court on August 1, 2008 after the Service’s committee detected that Uralsib had been using unsuitable advertisements throughout Sverdlovsk Region’s cities and towns. The advert in question had to do with the bank’s Mortgage offer and apparently

UralBusinessConsulting Agency of Information and Analytics has recently found out that Bank24.ru’s additional office located at 29 Malyshev St. might soon close down. In the meantime, the bank’s Chairman Sergey Lapshin has earlier announced via Bank24.ru’s official website that the bank seems to run too many additional offices, which is why they might cut down on their number.

URSA Bank came up with a performance report for 2008 (based on the Russian Accounting Standards). The bank’s balance sheet profit came to 3.7 billion RUR on January 1, 2009, which was 1.1 times better than a year earlier. URSA Bank’s net assets amounted to 213.4 billion RUR on the first day of this year, which exceeded the figures for January 1, 2008 by over 1.2 times. The volume of customers’ investments rose by 1.2 times and reached 62.2 billion RUR last year, largely due to the growing business customers’ fixed term deposits. The private customers’ deposit volume amounted to 36.8 billion

‘It’s impossible to improve on production without solving all the internal problems Uralmash Machine-Building Corporation is struggling with. We’ve got problems with discipline, negligence, theft, and lots of inefficient departments,’ Uralmash Machine-Building Corporation’s General Director Nazim Efendiev said at his meeting with the enterprise’s trade union representatives. ‘When it came to upgrading our machining departments, it became obvious that our experts are not very well informed about the equipment available on the market at the moment; nor do they know how to do the upgrading right

‘One of the serious threats faced by Russia’s economy at the moment is the business growing less legitimate on the one hand and money-laundering on the other. In this country, the lending crisis might become one of the stimulants for illegal practices’ trickling into business structures,’ Europe-Asia Information and Consulting Center’s GD Oleg Borisov said to an UrBC reporter. Meanwhile, experts get increasingly alarmed by the fact that most companies’ systemic risks keep rising. Apart from economic problems, businesses are also struggling with economic security-related issues. ‘Our

Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Eduard Rossel met up with Novolipetsk Iron & Steel Works (NLMK) BOD Chairman Vladimir Lisin and Maxi Group’s General Director Valeriy Shevelev to discuss their businesses’ performance. A little over a year ago, NLMK group (headed by Vladimir Lisin) acquired Maxi Group’s controlling shareholding. As it happens, Maxi Group actually comprises a number of Sverdlovsk Region-based metallurgical plants; in addition, NLMK owns the local VIZ Stal. Vladimir Lisin informed the Governor that all of the holding’s enterprises kept on operating. He explained that about 60%

‘Two medical insurance companies are leaving Chelyabinsk Region’s market at the moment. These are Ural-AIL-Med and Medincom that used to insure slightly over 70,000 locally employed people,’ Chelyabinsk Region Obligatory Medical Insurance Fund explained to an UrBC reporter. ‘Some companies are leaving the regional insurance market and some new ones are coming to replace them, and this is all perfectly normal. Insurers are private enterprises that can set up or close down a business in this or that part of Russia. The thing is, the employers whose workers have been insured with a leaving

Standard & Poor's, the international rating agency, affirmed MDM Bank’s corporate governance rating at 6+ and promoted its rating on the Russian scale up to 6,9, Independent Information Agency reports. MDM Bank’s ratings have thus been signed off the GovernanceWatch list, with Developing Rating Outlook. As a matter of fact, the bank’s ratings had to be reconsidered on December 4, 2008 because of its merging with URSA Bank. In the meantime, URSA Bank’s ratings were also promoted in December 2008. Fitch affirmed the bank’s short-term Issuer Default Rating at B+ and put it on Rating

‘We’ve lived through several difficult months, but the coming winter and spring ones are going to be even harder. I believe the first signs of the market recovery can only be expected next fall,’ Uralmash Machine-Building Corporation’s General Director Nazim Efendiev said in his interview to Za Tyazheloye Mashinostroyeniye ‘It is quite probable that we might not get any new contracts in 2009, so we’ll just keep finishing up with the old ones; also, we might be offered some smaller orders that will take three to six months to fulfill,’ he added.

‘Uralmash Machine-Building Corporation reports 79 people are to be made redundant throughout January and February 2009,’ says Yekaterinburg Employment Center’s deputy director Anatoly Kudryashov. ‘All in all, we’ve heard from seventy enterprises that are going to switch their workers to part-time mode, including Verkh-Isetskiy Metallurgical Plant and Stroytechservice,’ he added. ‘Uralmashzavod announced 2,317 people would be working part time soon, with another 309 people going on unpaid leaves,’ Anatoly Kudryashov noted. UralBusinessConsulting Agency of Information and Analytics found out