Bank Severnaya Kazna’s Board of Directors decided to close down the bank’s subsidiaries in Moscow, Saint Petersburg, Tyumen, and Perm. The decision was taken during a meeting held on January 27, 2009.

Bank Severnaya Kazna offered its customers 2,367,976,000 RUR less worth of loans in December 2008 compared with the previous month. In November 2008, the bank’s lending volume reached 27,118,929,000 RUR, whereas by January 1, 2009, the figure dropped down to 24,754,962,000 RUR. Bank Severnaya Kazna was sold to Alfa-Bank at the end of November 2008. The former was reported to have experienced grave liquidity problems at that moment.

‘The unfolding global economic crisis that broke out in the last quarter of 2008 resulted in the dropping demand for steel produce and therefore plummeting prices. Therefore Novolipetsk Iron & Steel Works (NLMK) and NLMK Group’s major enterprises did less impressively in terms of output last year compared with 2007,’ says the spokesperson for Novolipetsk Iron & Steel Works. The enterprise produced 1.367 million tons of cast iron in October-December 2008, which was 38.8% less than in July-September 2008; then, their steel, slab, hot-rolled iron, and cold-rolled iron output reached

Bank Severnaya Kazna’s return on equity plummeted by 40% in December 2008. According to the available data, the bank’s ROE was estimated at -1% in November 2008 and at -41% by January 1, 2009. Then, the bank’s return on assets was assessed at -3.5% on January 1, 2009 against -.1% in November 2008. All the data are available from Bank24.ru’s official website featuring a report on the performance of Sverdlovsk Region’s banks on January 1, 2009. As a matter of fact, the decrease in the bank’s profitability became obvious after Bank Severnaya Kazna had been bought by Alfa-Bank.

Bank Severnaya Kazna’s funds decreased by 1,024,876,000 RUR in December 2008 compared with the previous month: the figure came to 4,124,791,000 RUR in November 2008 but only to 3,099,915,000 RUR on January 1, 2009. 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.

Last December, the money volume of loans offered by Bank24.ru to its customers dropped by 1,160,252,000 RUR compared with November 2008. The figure came to 3,205,298,000 RUR in December 2008 against 4,365,550,000 RUR in November 2008. 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.

‘Koltsovo Airport of Yekaterinburg serviced 2,529,395 passengers last year, with the annual net profit preliminarily estimated at 587million RUR (compared with 747 million RUR in 2007). The revenues are expected to reach 6.5 billion RUR (in comparison with 5.3 billion RUR in 2007). This increase in revenues can be explained by the greater jet fuel prices,’ Koltsovo Airport’s General Director Kirill Shubin announced in the course of a press conference in Yekaterinburg. ‘The amount of money airlines owe us nearly doubled over 2008; remarkably, the lion’s share of these debts was made before

Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) has recently re-launched its No.4 sintering plant. Prior to this re-launch, the plant had to be temporarily halted in November 2008 because of decreasing production output. According to the company’s PR Department, one of the plant’s key challenges lay in keeping as many of the sintering plant’s workers as possible busy and employed during the stoppage. To do this, the plant had to switch to a five-shift working mode, with a portion of workers transferred to No.2 and No.3 sintering plants, the sulfur unit, and the concentrate storage area. In the

Sverdlovsk Region’s division of Federal Antimonopoly Service is to consider the claim laid against MRSK Ural (the interregional network distribution company) on January 27, 2009. The company is suspected of violating Article 10 (part 1) of the Federal Bill 135 on Protection of Competition (as of July 26, 2006). The alleged violation consisted in making Uralelectromed reconcile with inconvenient terms of an agreement on technological connection (to be provided by MRSK Ural). Then, the defendant is suspected of inflicting upon Uralelectromed the similarly inconvenient terms of maintenance

The Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development recently launched a new, special deposit type known as Business Rhythm, the bank’s press officer reports. The beauty of the new deposit offer lies in the bank’s readiness to let the customer take the money back before the end of the deposit period; what is more, even if a customer wants to cash the deposit early, the interest rates will still look very appealing, which makes managing one’s finances more flexible and more profitable. The deposit period comes to anything between 100 and 367 days. In case a customer chooses to open a deposit for

The construction of 3D Club (the apartment block) in Yekaterinburg will have to be slowed down in comparison with last summer’s rate because of the current economic crisis. Meteorite (Meteorit & Co Ltd), the general contractor, says the main reason for this is the lack of investment from the investor, that is, 3D Club construction cooperative. The cooperative Board suggested that the future apartment owners might do without the complete remodeling of their rooms so that the money saved could be used to cover the underground parking lot. The Board explained that the complete remodeling was

Plenipotentiary Representative of Russian Federation President in Ural Federal District Nikolai Vinnichenko held a meeting on the efficiency of crisis-defying measures in the economy’s real sector in Chelyabinsk. The meeting was attended by Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin and heads and representatives of Ural Federal District’s largest enterprises. ‘The problem of most industrial branches is their poor technical capacity. 49.8% of Ural Federal District’s basic machinery is worn out, while the Russian average figures come to 45.3%. The available analytical data make it obvious that

Chelyabinsk Tube Rolling Plant and Pervouralsk New Pipe Plant (ChTPZ Group’s largest tube and pipe manufacturers) supplied their consumers with 1.509 million tons of tubular goods in the twelve months of 2008, which falls short of the figures for a year earlier (that is, 1.892 million tons) by 20%. The decrease in the output volume mainly has to do with smaller demand for large-diameter pipes in the industrial, machine-building, construction, and energy sectors in the last quarter of 2008. The decrease in demand was, in its turn, brought about by the rapidly unfolding financial and economic

URSA Bank paid its investors 209.4 million RUR worth of coupon yield on the bank’s seventh bond issue. The bank went through with this five-billion-ruble bond issue (serial number 40700323 В) on July 26, 2007; the bonds are to be in circulation for five years. The issue was coordinated by Renaissance Capital and Deutsche Bank. The coupon yield was determined by the 8.4% annual interest rate (41.88 RUR per each bond).

The Central Bank of Russia reports 1,246 counterfeit banknotes were confiscated within the country in the last quarter of 2008, of which 1,163 bills were U.S. dollars, 72 banknotes were euros, seven bills were Chinese Renminbi yuans, and four bills were UK pounds sterling.

The Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development was able to raise its assets by 31.4%, so these now amount to 50.33 billion RUR. The bank’s balance sheet total reached 71.42 billion RUR on January 1, 2009 (which was 79% better than a year earlier). The customers’ account balance exceeded 29.44 billion RUR last year, while the private individuals’ deposit volume increased up to 20.48 billion RUR. ‘Our end-of-year performance results make it obvious that, despite the microeconomic difficulties, the bank keeps on successfully implementing its chosen strategy and expands the business through

‘Under the circumstances (that is, under the current liquidity crisis) most builders are in and because of the plummeting prices, all the plans related to putting up suburban cottages have been postponed by about a year. This includes, for instance, Snegiri cottage district; then, the construction of River Park Club in the countryside has been put off indefinitely, whereas the whole concept of the building had to be reconsidered because of the current economic problems. The same is true of many other projects. The construction of a cottage district in Priozerniy hasn’t even been started yet,

‘Our financial recovery plan targeted at helping Bank Severnaya Kazna included a detailed analysis which resulted in the decision to close down seven of the bank’s offices because they showed complete lack of profits over this and last periods,’ Alfa-Bank’s representative said to an UrBC reporter. Six of Bank Severnaya Kazna’s (now the asset of Alfa-Bank) offices located in Sverdlovsk Region are to stop operating in the nearest future. Four of these are based in Yekaterinburg; one office is located in Kamensk-Uralskiy, and one more in Pervouralsk. In addition, one more office stopped

Ural Airlines is introducing a new Yekaterinburg-Krasnoyarsk-Yekaterinburg flight. The carrier’s CEO Sergey Skuratov mentioned the airline’s plans to expand into Siberia and the Far East as early as the fall of 2008; in fact, creating a wider destination network is an important component of the airline’s development strategy for the next five years. Having built up on the number of aircraft, Ural Airlines is expected to win its market niche on Western Siberia and Amur Region’s civil aviation markets as well as to move on to China and launch new flights to South-East Asia (after a long haul

SKB-Bank’s private individuals’ deposits amounted to over 13 billion RUR in January 2009. The figure came to 11.97 billion RUR on December 31, 2008. ‘Our customers have deposited more than 1 billion RUR with the bank since New Year,’ the bank’s press officer reports. The bank’s Patriot deposit type is definitely the most popular one with customers, as the interest rate on this deposit comes to 16% a year during the first 100 days of the deposit period. What is more, UAZ Patriot, and off-road vehicle, will be awarded to one of the depositors in the course of a lottery drawing.