Central Bank of Russia reports volume of loans given by Tagilbank to non-state for-profit organizations for 181 days to 1 year went down by 26.44% (from 184.217 million RUR to 135.504 million RUR) on January 1, 2009 compared with a year earlier.

According to the Central Bank of Russia, volume of loans given by UralTransBank to sole traders for up to 30 days dropped by 42.62% (from 6.527 million RUR to 3.745 million RUR) on January 1, 2009 compared with a year earlier.

The Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development is now offering a wider range of deposit types to its business customers. ‘Placing one’s available funds on a deposit with a nice-looking interest is even more beneficial now, as we have recently raised the interest rates on our Kopilka deposit type (the annual interest rate can reach up to 13.7% here) and on our Great Income deposit where the maximum of 14.4% a year is paid at the end of the deposit period; alternatively, one can get one’s interest in rubles on a monthly basis, in which case the interest rate will amount to up to 14.7% a year.

Rus-Bank-Ural started dealing in foreign currency (USD) loans on January 26, 2009. ‘The new offer applies to automobile loans as well as consumer ones. The terms of these foreign currency loans (the sum, the interest, the requirements a borrower has to meet, and so on) are the same as those we hold for the classic ruble ones. The dollar is used to determine the amount of money borrowed from the bank, the interest rate, and the commission,’ the spokesperson for the bank explains. ‘We hope the new program is going to be popular with customers willing to buy a new car on credit (as a lot of

Sverdlovsk Gubernskiy Bank switched to a new version of Internet Bank system on January 31, 2009-February 1, 2009. ‘BS-Client v.3, the new version, is based on Message-Pro v.3, the newest cryptographic protection device available. This super protection will enable the bank to greatly enhance the safety and confidentiality of all its transactions,’ the bank’s IT experts report. ‘Safety and security are the key factors affecting a customer’s decision to use e-banking. I’m positive our clients are going to like our switching to Internet Bank’s new version,’ says the bank’s IT Management Director

Uralfinpromabank’s deposit volume dropped by 23.326 million RUR in December 2008, that is, from 2,219,681,000 RUR in November 2008 to 2,196,355,000 RUR last December. These data are available from Bank24.ru’s official website featuring a report on the performance of Sverdlovsk Region’s banks on January 1, 2009.

Ural Airlines recently got EASA 145.0415 and BDA/AMO/357 approval certificates. These certificates enable the airline to carry out transit-, daily-, weekly-check, and a-check maintenance procedures of Airbus A320 using its own station, without having to use the services of other companies. To get a permission to do this, a carrier needs EASA’s (European Aviation Safety Agency) approval as well as the approval of the Bermudas’ authorities that monitor the compliance of Airbus users with their maintenance regulations. Prior to Ural Airlines getting the papers, Aeroflot and Siberia Airlines were

Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Eduard Rossel chaired the meeting of the regional committee responsible for preparing things for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in the summer of 2009. The Governor said that a report on how well Sverdlovsk Region was prepared for the summit was to be presented at a meeting in the Kremlin on February 11, 2009. Last year, twenty summit-related projects were implemented successfully, with yet nine and seventeen summit-related events to take place this year on the federal and regional scale, respectively. All in all, 115 buildings were supposed to have

The account balance of VUZ-Bank’s customers went down by 66.94 million RUR in December 2008 (from 646.229 million RUR to 580.135 million RUR). These data are available from Bank24.ru’s official website featuring a report on the performance of Sverdlovsk Region’s banks on January 1, 2009.

URSA Bank’s subsidiary in Ufa became one of the winners in the state tender where banks competed for the right to deposit the available funds of some state unitary enterprises. The banks were selected by the Finance Ministry of the Republic of Bashkortostan among the organizations that managed to place their applications on December 3-17, 2008, the bank’s press officer reports. ‘This is the second time the subsidiary has won this contest. Establishing good partnerships with the state-run enterprises is one of the bank’s top priorities that helps us build up on the liabilities base as well as

‘UC RUSAL’s Severouralsk bauxite mine (SUBR) was supposed to switch to a four-day working week early in February 2009; however, on second thought, the enterprise’s management decided to wait, since it turned out that the public prosecution authorities had been rather alarmed by this news. In fact, the order to this extent really was not formalized in accordance with all the existing regulations. For one, the employer failed to inform the workers about the change in their working conditions two months in advance (as the rules state). This is why, as far as I know, the prosecution authorities

The amount of money kept in VUZ-Bank’s customers’ settlement accounts went down by 66.094 million RUR (from 646.229 million RUR to 580.135 million RUR) last December. These data are available from Bank24.ru’s official website featuring a report on the performance of Sverdlovsk Region’s banks.

‘The construction of the new international flights terminal is almost finished, so the terminal will probably have been launched by the end of March 2009. By this time, the architectural finish of the control tower will have been completed as well. As for the equipment, the delivery and assembly jobs are to begin in May,’ Yekaterinburg-based Koltsovo Airport’s General Director Kirill Shubin announced at a meeting devoted to special construction projects monitored by Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Eduard Rossel. ‘However, while Yekaterinburg is hosting the Shanghai Cooperation Organization

Moskommerzbank Commercial Bank decided to close down its subsidiaries based in Ural Federal District. These include the bank’s offices in Tyumen and Chelyabinsk. So, Moskommerzbank no longer runs any subsidiaries in Ural Federal District.

‘Sverdlovsk Region is not going to enter The Industrial Urals-The Polar Urals (a corporation created to support the industrial development of the Urals’ north). Joining this corporation would actually be illegitimate, because the procedure still needs a special legislature to support it; we need to make sure there isn’t going to be any trouble later,’ Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Eduard Rossel said in the course of a press conference in Yekaterinburg. As it happens, the Governor had said earlier that Sverdlovsk Region was not going to provide any financing of The Industrial Urals-The Polar

When asked by Nezavisimaya Gazeta, the Economic News Agency came up with its political influence rating of Russian entrepreneurs and investors in the last quarter of 2008. The country’s Top 50 most influential businesspeople were selected by a group of fifty-seven experts among 108 candidates on the basis of a zero to five scale (where zero to one would stand for minimum influence, one to two would stand for insignificant influence, two to three would stand for average influence, three to four would stand for strong influence, and four to five would stand for very strong influence. Viktor

Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works’ (MMK) fifth plate mill shop is going to raise its production output in February 2009. The shop has had to cut back on the output earlier because of the macroeconomic difficulties; besides, some of the workers were busy constructing Mill 5000, but they are expected to go back to their usual workplaces in a month’s time, Magnitogorskiy Metall reports. ‘Starting February, we are going to intensify our production program. For one, we intend to produce 71,000 tons of cold-rolled metal. There is no risk of goods getting over-stored, because we know we’ll have to

Bank24.ru reports the charges for servicing private customers have been changed. Starting February 1, 2009, the interest paid on a private individual’s foreign currency account balance will come to 1% a year for U.S. dollar accounts (against 10% a year that used to be paid on these account types earlier).

Parkridge Holdings had to give up on the idea of putting up a 150,000-square-meter storehouse in Yekaterinburg and is now halting its planned expansion in the Russian regions, Vedomosti reports. The company announced at the end of 2007 that they were negotiating for a purchase of a thirty-hectare land allotment in Yekaterinburg. The allotment was intended for a large 150,000-square-meter storage facility. ‘We did negotiate for buying a land allotment in town, but the first signs of an economic crisis became obvious as early as last summer, for the price of both allotments and construction

All of SKB-Bank’s major development indicators showed some rather impressive growth dynamics in 2008. For one, the bank’s asset volume went up by 10 billion RUR and thus exceeded 39.8 billion RUR altogether. Then, SKB-Bank’s lending portfolio rose from 19.3 billion RUR to 27.9 billion RUR. By January 1, 2009, private customers had entrusted SKB-Bank with over 13.7 billion RUR worth of deposits (compared with only 8.6 billion RUR on January 1, 2008). What is more, after the bank went through with an additional share issue, the company’s stock capital increased up to 1,822,775 million RUR,