The media keep informing the public about Bank24.ru’s possible bankruptcy. UralBusinessConsulting Agency of Information and Analytics has already reported earlier that one of small-scale Yekaterinburg-based banks affected by the financial crisis might declare itself insolvent during the recess on November 5-6, 2008. A number of the bank’s customers say the bank has already stopped all the payments involving legal entities’ accounts. The money in the private individuals’ accounts has been frozen for two weeks so far, which might mean Bank24.ru is going through a technical failure that will

Starting October 30, 2008, Vladivostok Avia will no longer be operating Yekaterinburg-Shardzha flights to the United Arab Emirates. This means only two flights have been operated by the carrier (on October 23, 2008 and October 27, 2008) since the destination has been initially offered this season. The passenger load is reported to have been very low. Experts believe this failure was brought about by the wrong choice of the company’s development direction. ‘There are already more than plenty of flights from Yekaterinburg to the United Arab Emirates at the moment,’ says More Travel’s Commercial

Bank Severnaya Kazna’s BOD Chairman Vladimir Frolov believes the bank’s current financial troubles have been caused by a hostile takeover attempt. ‘Starting October 13, 2008, the bank’s customers were flooded with text messages and ICQ alerts claiming the bank was in great trouble. It only sounded natural since the whole world has been affected by a financial crisis, and Russia is no exception. So it really is the best time to alarm the people,’ the bank executive said in the course of a Channel 4 interview. Vladimir Frolov claims some other bank and Sverdlovsk Region Government were actually

Sverdlovsk Gubernskiy Bank keeps preventing its customers from cashing their deposits before the end of the deposit period, the bank’s customer said to an UrBC reporter. The bank stopped cashing the deposits before the end of the deposit period altogether last week. The bank’s call center explained the decision to this extent had been taken by the Bank’s BOD Chairman. The unhappy customer also says Sverdlovsk Gubernskiy Bank stopped any non-cash payments directed not only to some other banks but even to their own subsidiaries in other cities and towns.

Mechel Trading Company is about to close down a number of subsidiaries it runs in Ural Federal District. This covers the company’s Chelyabinsk subsidiary at 32 Paveletskaya St. in Chelyabinsk and Ural subsidiary located at 7 Dzerzhinskiy St. in Chebarkul.

Bank Severnaya Kazna decreased the amount of money directed to stock and securities investment by over 668 million RUR in September 2008. According to Bank24.ru’s official website, the bank had 4.04 billion RUR worth of securities investments on September 1, 2008, whereas a month later, the figure only came to 3.37 billion RUR, which indicates a 16% drop in the amount of investments.

Novolipetsk Iron & Steel Works (NLMK) declared recently that the enterprise’s net profit had gone down by 6.21 billion RUR, or 16.8%, in the third quarter of 2008 compared with the figures for the second quarter of the year. The company believes this drop has to do with the 13.6-billion-ruble decrease in the dividends obtained from NLMK’s daughter enterprises.

The Italian court agreed to prolong the detention term of Alexei Kalinichenko until February 2009. The accused is suspected of masterminding a pyramid scheme and embezzling more than 1 billion RUR and is now under the criminal extradition proceedings. The Russian authorities revealed that for a number of years, Kalinichenko had been advertising his company and promising people a lot of income from the interbank foreign currency exchange speculation his firms would deal in using the investors’ money. The accused even went so far as to upload fake financial reports about his companies’

Starting November 1, 2008, one of the stores run by Sela, the clothes manufacturer, and located at 62/2 Lenin Ave. will no longer be operating. Five Yekaterinburg-based stores and a shop in Berezovskiy used to be owned by the proprietors of Boston 2000 Valeriy Balyabin and Vladimir Pashkin. The two men decided at the end of August 2008 that they would give up on the franchise and give the shops back to Saint Petersburg-based Skala Asia, Sela’s daughter enterprise. Valeriy Balyabin explained the decision had been taken because of the decreased profitability of the local clothes market.

Moscow, 28 October 2008 – UC RUSAL, the world’s largest aluminium and alumina producer, is pleased to announce the launch of the anode-baking furnace at the Sayanogorsk aluminium smelter following its modernisation.љ The goal of the USD 25 million project was to provide the Sayanogorsk and Khakas aluminium smelters with the necessary volume of high quality anodes, which are required for aluminium production. The oldest of the three furnaces in operation at the plant was stopped in March this year for major repairs and modernisation. These were done in the shortest possible time. The

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin signed a provision on the region’s anti-crisis action plan. The spokesperson for the Governor reports the first part of the plan deals with measures targeted at supporting the economy’s real sector with nearly 2 billion RUR. This will include help to large, small, and medium enterprises as well as agriculture and light industry. To make sure they can keep a close eye on the situation and react promptly, the government created four working teams responsible for agriculture, construction and mortgages, large and medium enterprises and light industry,

Chairman of Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) and President of Metallurg hockey club Viktor Rashnikov is now one of the founder members of Russian Olympics Support Fund. The Fund was set up in 2005 and has been offering grants to sports players, coaches and national team experts ever since. The Fund was initially founded by ten well-known Russian businesspeople: Alexander Abramov, Roman Abramovitch, Vagit Alekperov, Petr Aven, Vladimir Bogdanov, Oleg Deripaska, Vladimir Evtushenkov, Vladimir Lisin, Vladimir Potanin, and Viktor Vekselberg. The Fund’s Board of Trustees is chaired by

A group of people were supposed to take part in a march meant to show the depositors’ support of the local banks on October 26, 2008. The march coordinators were planning to have a group of people marching with handmade posters bearing slogans supportive of the regional banks, primarily Bnk24.ru. The slogans were expected to read, ‘I trust Ural banks’, ’24 is our bank’, and ‘Our favorite bank is Bank24.ru. According to preliminary reports, there were supposed to have been ten to fifteen demonstrators with seven or eight posters altogether. The plan was masterminded by one of Yekaterinburg’s

Private individuals took out more than 152 million RUR from their deposits in Sverdlovsk Gubernskiy Bank in September 2008. All in all, the bank had 7,575,809,000 RUR in terms of private individuals’ deposit investments on September 1, 2008 and only 7,423,716,000 RUR on October 1, 2008. These data are available from Bank24.ru’s official website.

Private individuals took out more than 956 million RUR from their deposits in Bank Severnaya Kazna in September 2008. All in all, the bank had 20,641,069,000 RUR in terms of private individuals’ deposit investments on September 1, 2008 and only 19,684,671,000 RUR on October 1, 2008. These data are available from Bank24.ru’s official website.

Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin met the heads of the region’s banking and small and medium business communities to discuss the current state of the region’s economy and the federal authorities’ attempts to make the country’s financial system more dependable as well as the things the regional government could do to support the small business. The meeting participants spoke favorably of the Russian Government’s decision to allocate 30 billion RUR to help the small business and said they hoped some portion of this money would be directed to Chelyabinsk Region. In the meantime, an ad

Moody’s, the international rating agency, demoted Bank Severnaya Kazna’s long-term ratings on national and foreign currency deposits from B2 to Caa2 – all that without providing any definite rating outlook, Banki.ru reports. What is more, the bank’s financial stability rating went down from E+ to E, with Stable rating outlook. In the meantime, the agency confirmed Bank Severnaya Kazna’s short-term ratings on national and foreign currency deposits as Not-Prime, whereas Moody’s Interfax Rating Agency decreased the bank’s long-term national scale rating from Baa1.ru to B2.ru. ‘These decisions

Renova-StroyGroup is currently coordinating a tender aimed at finding a general contractor for the construction of blocks 2.1 and 2.1.1 of Yekaterinburg’s future Academic district. This will include putting up apartment building ranging in height from seven to sixteen floors (with all the communications provided) and setting up the entire infrastructure like pedestrian walks, pavements, squares, parking lots, parks and flower beds, street lights, and so on. The construction process is to begin in December 2008 after the tender has been completed. ‘Our long-term economic strategy and the

MOTIV Telecommunications Group is going to make its GPRS roaming services available in a few more countries at the end of October 2008. Staring October 24, 2008, for example, the service will be offered in the Republic of Mauritius (through Emtel Limited). On October 27, 2008, MOTIV’s customers using the GSM standard will be able to use international roaming in Tajikistan (through Indigo Tajikistan CJSC). Finally, Telefónica Móviles España, S.A will start cooperating with MOTIV in Spain on October 29, 2008, MOTIV’s press officer reports.

Bank24.ru’s top managers are asking the bank’s customers to consider the advanced repayment of their credits. The bank’s official website, for example, advertises their special offer: pay off your debt now and don’t worry about the interest rate payments in October. Meanwhile, Bank24.ru keeps applying certain sanctions to customers who want to cash their deposits before the end of the deposit period. The bank’s call center reports in this case a customer has to place an application nearly a month in advance and will only be allowed to take out no more than 10,000 RUR. As far as ATMs and