‘Bank Severnaya Kazna does not have and never had any credit cards,’ Alfa Bank’s Chairman Rushan Khvesyuk announced in the course of an online press conference today. ‘What the bank did have was the bank cards with an overdraft limit; these were no credit cards, in fact. Now, however, any customer can get Alfa Bank’s full-fledged credit cards at the bank,’ he added. Nevertheless, the Chairman’s statements contradict Bank Severnaya Kazna’s official data. The latter announced the launch of its credit card lending program as early as 2004. The classic credit cards and credit cards with a grace

URSA Bank’s Personal Finance University welcomes all the ‘golden age’ retirees interested in enhancing their financial literacy. The lectures and seminars will be given on the premises of Veterans’ Councils, universities and Retirement Fund’s departments in the Ural and Siberian cities on December 15-23, 2008. In the course of their lectures, the bank’s experts are to tell the attendees about the current state of the country’s banking system, clever savings management, handling money orders, and using bank cards. URSA Bank has been offering its Personal Finance University workshop to the

‘Over 100 tons of Irish pork poisoned with dioxin happened to be delivered into various Russian regions. Yekaterinburg received the lion’s share of this meat, that is, 98 tons. Russia was one of the countries to get the greatest amounts of poisoned pork,’ says head Gennady Onischenko, head of Rospotrebnadzor (the state consumer rights watchdog). Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) reported on December 6, 2008 that their lab tests of feeding stuff and lard samples carried out on September 1, 2008 revealed enormous dioxin content in both. The amount of poison in the samples exceeded the

Probusinessbank’s extraordinary general meeting resulted in the decision to approve of the subordinate loan the bank might take from East Capital Financials Fund AB. The loan would amount to 624.89 million RUR that the bank will have to pay back over a five-year period alongside with the 12% annual interest rate. According to the terms of the transaction, the subordinate loan agreement can be converted in registered common stock at a price of 2,145 RUR per share, should the creditor want this. The creditor is allowed to apply for the conversion within three years of signing the loan

SKB-Bank looked into its business performance as of December 1, 2008. The bank’s net assets went up by 10.8 billion RUR over the year and reached more than 39.3 billion RUR. This is 37.5% better than the figures achieved on December 1, 2007. Then, the bank was able to raise the amount of attracted investments by nearly one third, so these came to 33 billion RUR, including over 12 billion RUR of private individuals’ investments as of December 1, 2008. SKB-Bank’s loan portfolio increased by more than 40% and amounted to over 27.5 billion RUR. The bank’s own funds reached over 7 billion RUR,

‘All the unhealthy panic around the bank deposits in Sverdlovsk Regions has finally cooled down. People are no longer desperate to get their cash back immediately. The banks that used to have a hard time cashing their customers’ deposits have by now managed to solve their liquidity problems, and people even started opening more deposits now,’ says Pavel Efremov, Advisor to the Chairman of Bank Monetniy Dom (Mechel-Bank). For one, the amount of foreign currency deposits opened in November 2008 exceeded that for October 2008 by 22.9%, whereas the amount of foreign currency deposits opened in

Following the order of Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin, 520 million RUR were allocated from the region’s budget to pay the end-of-year bonus to the public sector workers. The spokesperson for the Governor reports 79 million RUR has been directed to the regional organizations’ workers, while the remaining 441 million RUR will be used to pay municipal employees. The money has therefore been distributed among the region’s towns and districts, and the Finance Ministry has by now fully completed transferring the necessary subsidies into the municipal budgets. Before New Year’s Day, all

‘People still need to securely invest their savings somehow, so many of them head for reliable banks that offer a nice interest rate on deposits. As for the banks, each one has its own strategy, behavior, and pricing policies,’ URSA Bank’s Vice President Alexei Sannikov announced in the course of a round table discussion on the so-called Precious Depositor in Yekaterinburg. The agenda of the discussion largely dealt with one big question: will the banking community manage to retain its private customers’ trust? ‘When working with customers, depositors in particular, the banks act in much the

LSR Ural Management Company decided that Yekaterinburg-based NOVA-Group should no longer exist as an independent entity after merging with the company. Prior to the merger, LSR Ural Management Company owned 100% of NOVA-Group’s authorized capital.

Bank Severnaya Kazna reduced the interest rates offered on its Gold Staircase and Rentier deposits on December 15, 2008, the bank’s official website reports.

URSA Bank retired its 1.5-billion-ruble second bond issue on December 12, 2008. The bank also paid 28.425 million RUR worth of profits, since the annual interest rate was declared at 7.6%, or 18.95 RUR per bond. The bank went through with the bond issue on December 16, 2005; the bonds were to be in circulation for three years. The transaction was coordinated by Dresdner Bank.

Elena Malakhova (31) was appointed CEO of UniCreditBank’s Yekaterinburg subsidiary. The spokesperson for the bank reports Ms Malakhova used to be the counselor of the subsidiary’s director for economic issues and its retail sales director prior to this promotion. The bank states the new executive graduated from Moscow State Pedagogical University with honors in 1999. Her majors were Physics and Philology.

The Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development has recently been declared Sverdlovsk Region’s most lucrative bank. According to RBC.Rating’s list of banks that proved most profitable and effective in January-September 2009, the Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development was Russia’s 49th largest bank and the region’s No.1 in terms of profits. The bank’s balance sheet profit rose by 25% over a year and reached 724.3 million RUR on October 1, 2008, the bank’s press officer reports. The business’s great profitability proves that the bank manages to keep up with the rapid development,

Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Eduard Rossel and Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the State of Israel to the Russian Federation Anna Azari to discuss the two ecountries’ cooperation potential in the field of high technologies, telecommunication systems, disaster medicine, and security. The Governor suggested that the Israeli enterprises might act as the prospective investors in Sverdlovsk Region’s innovational businesses and venture funds as well as get a share in various joint projects related to nanotechnologies. In addition, the two parties looked into the possibility of

Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) won in the first municipal landscaping contest. The competition was held for the industrial, building, and production enterprises; these were assessed on the basis of their premises’ landscaping and site finishing level, the beauty of lawns of flower beds, recreational development, the availability and cleanliness of parking lots and rubbish bins, the exterior of the buildings, the design of a business’s sign plates and adverts, and the company’s participation in Magnitogorsk’s environmental and urban development programs. All the contestants had to

The construction of the battery room’s casing was completed by SUBRStroy at Novo-Kalyinskaya mine of Severouralsk Bauxite Mine (SUBR). The site is currently occupied by the experts of RUS Engineering now that the subcontractors have done their job. Says RUS Engineering’s site foreman Nikolai Vdovkin: ‘I’d say we have plenty of work to do. Right now we are busy assembling the central heating and communication systems and finishing out the interior. Next week, the heating will be launched, and by the end of December, we’ll have had the battery room commissioned. This is bound to be a grand

Sberbank of Russia’s Ural branch has issued three million bank cards by December 2008, with over 700,000 cards offered to customers in 2008 alone. Sberbank of Russia issues and deals with MasterCard and Visa cards as well as Sbercart, the Russian system. ‘The increase in the number of cards is accompanied by the dynamic expansion of servicing infrastructure. For one, thee bank runs over 900 cash terminals, 1,675 ATMs, and 462 information & transaction terminals in all the areas of its economic presence. This means our customers can get their cash, top up their bank card account, and make

Chelyabinsk Tube Rolling Plant (ChTPZ) and Pervouralsk New Pipe Plant (ChTPZ Group’s largest tube and pipe manufacturers) supplied their consumers with 1.45 million tons of tubular goods in January-November 2008, which falls short of the figures for a year earlier (that is, 1.756 million tons) by 17%. ChTPZ sold 773,200 tons of tubes and pipes in eleven months of the year, which falls short of the figures for a year earlier (that is, 973,800 tons) by 21%. These figures include 379,300 tons of large-diameter pipes. Chelyabinsk Tube Rolling Plant delivered 35,700 tons of tubular goods to

Ural Airlines keeps implementing its aircraft upgrade and replacement program; the carrier has recently leased one more Airbus A320 which is nine years old and used to be driven by ClikAir (the Spanish low-cost airline and Iberia’s daughter enterprise). Prior to handing the airplane over to Ural Airlines, the aircraft had undergone a two-month preparation. Airbus was painted the new owner’s corporate colors; the inside of the plane and the luggage area were fully replaced, and the older standard seats were substituted by 162 improved REСARO leather armchairs, the spokesperson for Ural

Rus-Bank-Ural started paying compensation to Kurgan-based Kurganprombank’s depositors on December 11, 2008. This was made possible after the Deposit Insurance Agency declared that Rus-Bank was the winner among all the potential agent banks that would be involved in making compensation payments to the customers of Kurganprombank. Kurganprombank was had joined in the deposit insurance system and had its license annulled on November 27, 2008. This was seen as an insured event in accordance with the federal bill on the insurance of private individuals’ deposits in Russian Federation’s banks. The