Sverdlovsk Region Court of Arbitration started hearing case А60-40279/08 regarding Alfa Ural Trading House’s possible insolvency on January 16, 2009. According to the court files, the company placed its application with the court on December 19, 2008, asking to declare their bankruptcy. Alfa Ural claimed they were unable to meet their liabilities in full since the amount of debt exceeded the cost of the company’s property and assets. The accounts payable indicated in the application came to over 81.957 million RUR. The company is undergoing bankruptcy proceedings at the moment, with the

Mayor of Yekaterinburg Arkadiy Chernetskiy met with the committee responsible for the organization of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit this June to discuss the preparation process, the spokesperson for the city council reports. It was explained in the course of the meeting that global economic and financial problems made the summit coordinators reduce the number of construction projects meant for the event. These were Demidovskiy Business Center, Central Stadium, Antey Business Center’s third section, Europe Trade & Business Center, Greenwich Trade Center’s third section,

Ural Airlines came up with a performance report for 2008. In December 2008, the carrier serviced 77,834 passengers, which was 5% better than a year earlier. 18,338 people used the airline’s international flights (10% more than in December 2007), 45,437 people used domestic flights (9% less than a year earlier), and 14,059 people used the flights within the CIS (84% more than in December 2007). The airline operated 798 flights in December 2008 altogether, which exceeded the figures for a year earlier by 2%. The figures include 170 international flights (11% more than in December 2007), 480

‘It’s true that the car prices have gone up since the beginning of this year. For one, a Chevrolet is now 9% to 10% more expensive, Opel makes have gone up by 9%, and Saab cars now cost 8% more. Hummer and Cadillac car prices have remained the same for the time being. I feel this price increase may have to do with the increased custom duties. Then, the price could have been affected by the growing foreign currency exchange rates,’ says Petr Lapin, Ok-Trans (Glazurit Car Center) Sales Manager. According to the official data available, the number of cars sold in Russia in the last quarter of

SKB-Bank recently set up three more ATMs within the region; one new machine is located in Chelyabinsk at 16 Komsomolsky Ave. (Galaxy Entertainment Center), another one in Aramil, Sverdlovsk Region (Zarya Mall at 10 Pervoye Maya St. Then, the third ATM was launched in Volzhskiy, Volgograd Region (Nadezhda department store at the intersection of Lenin St and Fontannaya St. This means SKB-Bank’s ATM network now comprises 340 machines altogether, with 15 of them based in Chelyabinsk Region and 134 based in Sverdlovsk Region. All of these three new ATMs operate 24/7 and offer their users a wide

Yekaterinburg municipal council denied the upcoming introduction of a Bentley representation and show room in town. ‘The opening of a show room has been postponed because of the current financial crisis. In case the trouble isn’t long-lasting, the representation will start operating in Yekaterinburg in 2010 or 2011,’ Deputy Mayor Viktor Konteev’s press officer Ilona Starodubtseva said to an UrBC reporter. Meanwhile, Stuart McCullough, Bentley's Board Member for Sales and Marketing, announced earlier that their office would appear in Yekaterinburg very soon. ‘We keep on breaking onto the

Bank Severnaya Kazna’s (now the asset of Alfa Bank) additional office at 64 Vostochnaya St. closed down in Yekaterinburg. According to the bank’s official statement, the outlet is to welcome its customers for the last time on January 15, 2009.

The value of Bank Severnaya Kazna’s (now the asset of Alfa Bank) assets has gone down by 14.3%. The bank itself was acquired by Alfa Bank in December 2008. The bank’s assets were estimated at 50,065,192,000 RUR on December 1, 2008 and at 50,922,245,000 RUR on October 1, 2008. This means the figure dropped by 6,427,357,000 RUR, or 12.8% in absolute figures and by 7,284,410,000 RUR, or 14.3% percentage-wise. The bank reports the decrease in the asset value has been brought about by the shrinking lending portfolio and selling their securities.

Sberbank’s Ural branch recently made more options available via its ATMs and self-service devices located within Sverdlovsk Region. For one, the bank’s private borrowers can now make their loan payments using an ATM or an information & transaction terminal in any city in the region, regardless of where the loan was obtained. This is naturally much more convenient than having to use the ATMs of only the same subsidiary where the sum was originally borrowed, as the case had been before (Yekaterinburg used to be the only exception to this rule.). ‘The new service means the bank’s customers

‘Our top priority at the moment is maintaining operational stability and rendering top quality service to our customers. This comprises cash and settlement services and all the other products offered to entities,’ Bank Monetniy Dom’s Deputy Chair of the Board Galina Maltseva said to an UrBC reporter. ‘As the currently troubled economy gradually gets back to normal, we are planning on expanding the range of our products, mainly through more extensive lending, and reaching the ante-crisis level,’ she added. ‘Strange as it may seem, a crisis is a good time for finding new customers. A lot of

Standard & Poor's, the international rating agency, had to demote the Russian Gazprombank’s counterparty’s long-term and short-term credit ratings from BBB-/A-3 to ВВ+/В; the Rating Outlook dropped to Negative. At the same time, Gazprombank’s national scale rating was affirmed at ruAA+. ‘This rating demotion has to do with the bank’s weakened solvency through lower capitalization and a dramatic decrease in profits after a recent massive loss on trading transactions. What is more, the Russian economy on the whole has slowed down recently. Then, the risk level was enhanced by the

The income taxation mechanism for ruble deposits was changed on January 1, 2009. Most of the interest rates offered on ruble deposits won’t be liable to taxation any longer and the income tax would only be charged if the annual interest rate on the deposit exceeds the Bank of Russia’s refinancing rate by 5%. As for the refinancing rate, this comes to 13% at the moment, so any ruble deposit with annual interest rate of less than 18% isn’t to be taxed at all. ‘At the same time, the income taxation mechanisms for foreign currency deposits will remain the same. As for the ruble ones, the

The district’s public prosecution authorities for transport issues looked into the results of their performance in 2008. ‘In case of revealed arrears of wages, our officials took steps to make sure the money is paid. A lot of claims (totaling to 1.61 million RUR) were placed with the local courts, and we managed to win all of these cases,’ the spokesperson for the public prosecution authorities for transport issues says. ‘Last October, we checked the compliance of Sverdlovsk Region Railways and South Ural Railways with the security regulations related to transportation of hazardous freight.

‘Since the financial crisis broke out, we had to decrease the amount of loans offered to private entities. The reasons for this are obvious: the back payment just cannot be guaranteed. Unfortunately, it is not always possible at the moment to calculate whether a certain company is able of paying the loan off in due time. This does not mean, however, that we stopped offering loans to businesses altogether. Quite on the contrary, we are still prepared to meet our credit-solvent customers’ needs in full. All the strategic partners the bank has developed a long-term financial relationship with

Ural Airlines came up with results of their special offer targeted at customers who paid for their airplane tickets using Yandex.Money system. According to the terms of the offer, every tenth customer who used the system would be entitled to free Internet connection and cable TV hookup as well as three months of prepaid cable TV viewing and Internet traffic (provided by Stream Yekaterinburg). The first prize-awarding ceremony took place in November, the second one in December 2008. The second time, prizes were given to Denis Anferov, Andrey Korskanov, Ian Kasimov, Yuri Spiridonov, Andrey

Sverdlovsk Region Court of Arbitration is to appoint CIT Capital’s trustee in bankruptcy and to decide on the terms of the company’s bankruptcy proceedings on January 16, 2009 The court declared CIT Capital insolvent on December 27, 2008 after the debtor placed an application with the court explaining the sum of their liabilities came to more than 3.982 billion RUR and that they owed their creditors 16.708 million RUR worth of compulsory payments. What is more, 42.343 million RUR worth of claims laid against CIT Capital had been placed with numerous courts of general jurisdiction and

Sberbank’s Ural branch in Kurgan gave out prizes to the winners of the bank’s special offer lottery called ‘Time to Shop with Sberbank of Russia’. All of the bank’s cardholders who used those to pay for at least 300 RUR worth of shopping or services by their bank card in September and October 2008 were automatically placed on the potential prize-winners list. At the end of the offer, 200 customers of Sberbank’s Ural branch in Kurgan received 300 RUR in their bank card accounts. ‘Andrey Popov was definitely the most frequent bank card user, as he paid for over fifty purchases by his card.

Koltsovo Airport’s latest extraordinary general meeting resulted in the election of a new Board of Directors consisting of nine people. These are: Dmitriy Logunov, Ekaterina Lyakhova, Alexander Misharin, Evgeniy Olkhovik, Anatoly Pchelin, Vladimir Tasun, Nikolai Ulyanov, Evgeniy Chudnovskiy, and Andrey Shtorkh. Apart from electing the new BOD, the stockholders refused to approve of the joint stock company’s new Charter.

Last December, SKB-Bank’s official website conducted a survey on people’s forecasts as to the U.S. dollar exchange rate on January 1, 2009. 790 respondents took part in the survey in six days, with the dollar rate coming to 27.8 RUR on the first day of the survey (December 13, 200) and fluctuating within .2 to .3 RUR range during the other five days. The Bank of Russia’s official dollar exchange rate was determined at 29.39 RUR on the first day of the year, while the number of those surveyed by SKB-Bank who managed to get the figure close enough was only 5%. The majority of respondents

‘Our customers started converting their ruble deposits into foreign currency ones (which led to a drop in the former and an increase in the latter) due to the growing dollar and euro exchange rates. One could suppose this trend is to continue this year until the main cause of the rate fluctuations is present – that is, the weakening of the ruble against the dollar and the euro,’ Rus-Bank-Ural’s Market Analysis Director Konstantin Yushkov said to an UrBC reporter. In the meantime, the ruble rate keeps going down against the U.S. dollar, which has been causing a decrease in the volume of ruble