‘Russian Minister for Agriculture Alexei Gordeev included Chelyabinsk Region in the country’s agricultural areas register, so the South Urals can now take pride in being both an agrarian and an industrial node of this part of Russia,’ Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin said in the course of a ceremony dedicated to honoring the local farmers and processing industry workers. The spokesperson for the Governor reports the region’s agricultural industry has made a real breakthrough over the last decade. Chelyabinsk Region was nearly on the bottom of the country’s Top 30 regions in the 1990s

Dmitriy Loevskiy, who has a deposit at Sverdlovsk Gubernskiy Bank, placed his claims against the bank with the court and the public prosecution authorities on October 23, 2008. He has already sent official letters of complaint regarding the bank’s policy to the Bank of Russia and Rospotrebnadzor (the state consumer rights watchdog) earlier this week. The customer is thus trying to protect his legally supported right to using his own money he keeps in the deposit. Loevskiy placed 3,000,000 RUR onto the bank’s deposit and was planning to use the money to buy an apartment. On October 13, 2008,

Bank24.ru’s introduced the online payments limits of 3,000 RUR on October 22, 2008. In the meantime, the bank’s call center claims the limit comes to 10,000 RUR a day and to 50,000 RUR a month. They couldn’t explain why the official figures differ so much from the system’s actual performance.

Uralfinprombank’s cardholders can now only get 5,000 RUR a day through the bank’s ATMs, the organization’s call center reports. The call center’s employee said to an UrBC reporter that Uralfinprombank’s ATMs only handle the bank’s own cards for the time being. ‘We don’t accept other bank’s cards, only ours,’ he said.

URSA Bank made 150.33 million RUR worth of coupon payments on its fifth bond issue on October 22, 2008, the bank’s press officer reports. The coupon interest rate came to 10.05% a year, so each bond yielded 50.11 RUR in terms of profit. The bank went through with the three-billion-ruble bond issue on October 24, 2006 (file number 40500323 В). The issue was coordinated by Gazprombank and Citibank. The bonds are to be in circulation for five years.

METCOMBANK’s second additional share issue has been registered by the Licensing Department. The spokesperson for the bank reports 1 million shares with the face value of 1,000 RUR each were bought by the bank’s majority shareholder, which means the bank’s authorized capital has doubled and now comes to 2 billion RUR. METCOMBANK last raised its authorized capital on April 24, 2007. ‘The increase in the authorized capital was a pre-planned decision and part of our development strategy that the bank’s stockholders adopted at the end of 2007,’ the spokesperson explains. ‘The doubling of the

Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK), one of Russia’s leading steel manufacturers, retired $300m worth of Eurobonds on October 21, 2008 through MMK Finance S.A. The enterprise went through with the bonds issue in October 2003. The coupon interest rate was determined at 8% a year, so the coupon payments reached $120m by the time the bonds’ circulation period was over. The money obtained through the bond issue was partially used to finance MMK’s investment program. According to MMK Group’s consolidated statement (drawn up in compliance with the US GAAP) for the first half of 2008, MMK’s

‘Banks are already producing redundancy reports. Bank VTB Severo Zapad, for instance, is about to make 189 employees redundant. These are mainly lending experts that were formerly employed in the bank’s subsidiaries,’ says Yekaterinburg Employment Center’s Deputy Director Anatoly Kudryashov. In the meantime, the region’s State Labor Inspection reported as many as twenty-six Sverdlovsk Region-based enterprises had asked a number of people to leave by October 15, 2008.

One of Yekaterinburg’s popular Internet forums where people discuss the banking community’s problems published an unofficial rescue plan for Bank24.ru signed by the bank’s Chairman Sergey Lapshin. The message states Bank 24.ru backed out of the M&A proposals it had been made because the purchasing sums were seen as inadequate by the shareholders. Then, the message author does admit that the bank is having liquidity problems, especially in terms of non-cash resources, and is hoping for the federal authorities’ help. At the same time, the resource shortage and troubles with payment

Bank Severnaya Kazna BOD Chairman Vladimir Frolov admits that a portion of the bank’s shares might be sold to a new large investor. He reports that it is quite possible and that the management has already considered this as an option. ‘We don’t insist on keeping the controlling shareholdings to ourselves any longer. This wouldn’t be a right thing to do. We’ve overcome our own unwillingness and have spoken about the problem with many financial organizations,’ Vladimir Frolov announced in the course of a press confrerence in Yekaterinburg on October 22, 2008. Frolov did admit he had already

‘On the whole, the civil aviation market is having a hard time now: AirUnion is going through bankruptcy proceedings, and a number of other companies I believe will have to quit the market. KrasAir is very close to becoming insolvent as well partly because only 34% of the foreign aircraft the company leases is actually serviceable. As for Ural Airlines, our foreign airplanes serviceability coefficient comet to 86%, which is one of the best results in the branch,’ General Director of Ural Airlines Sergey Skuratov said in the course of a press conference. ‘I feel the leaving carriers’ market

‘Because of the financial crisis, Pnevmostroymachina will have to make 10% of its staff redundant. This means 200 people out of 2000,’ the company’s press officer Yana Dukhnovskaya said to an UrBC reporter. Besides, it has already been announced earlier that Pnevmostroymachina (part of Finpromco partnership) had to introduce a four-day working week, while a portion of the employees might have to leave on vacation on November 1-10, 2008. ‘It’s true that some of our workers will go on a ten-day leave next month. The workers dealing with the machines and equipment won’t be made redundant, since

Sverdlovsk Gubernskiy Bank keeps charging the customers who want to cash their deposits before the end of the deposit period a 20% commission. This is charged in case a customer takes out more than 50,000 RUR, and the fee comes to 20% of the remainder of the sum exceeding this 50,000-ruble limit. The limitations were imposed on October 14, 2008. The spokesperson for the bank claims the main idea behind this measure was to prevent the people from taking their money back ahead of time en masse.

‘The range of flight destinations Ural Airlines is going to operate this year has been greatly expanded. We now offer our customers many more flights to the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, the Czech Republic, and a number of other countries. In addition, we have recently resumed our flights to Paris and are planning on introducing a London-bound flight. In fact, over 80% of our New Year offers have already been booked and sold. We actually expect the passenger turnover to go up by 25% in the first quarter of 2009,’ Ural Airlines’ General Director Sergey Skuratov announced in the course of a

Standard & Poor’s confirmed the Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s long-term credit rating at B-. At the same time, the international agency’s long-term rating outlook was demoted from Stable to Negative. ‘We had to reconsider the bank’s rating outlook because of the problematic environment the bank has to operate in. This trying environment is affecting the liquidity level and the asset quality of all Russian banks, and the UBRD is no exception,’ says Standard & Poor’s credit analyst Viktor Nikolskiy. On the other hand, Standard & Poor’s analysts do admit that the

URSA Bank came up with a financial report for the first half of 2008; the report has been drawn up in accordance with the International Accounting Standards. The bank’s assets rose by 1.3 times over one year and reached $8.1bn in January-June 2008. The bank’s own funds increased by 1.5 times and amounted to $1.29bn on July 1, 2008. URSA Bank’s revenues came to $96.8m, which exceeds the figures for a year earlier by 1.6 times. This is actually an indicator of a 19.9% ROE and a 2.7% return on assets, which are rather good figures for the banking sector. URSA Bank’s net lending portfolio reached

Moscow, 21 October 2008 - UC RUSAL, the world’s largest aluminium and alumina producer, is pleased to announce the launch of production of super thin 9 microns aluminium foil at the ARMENAL foil mill (Armenia). The company invested USD 6 million in super thin foil production technology in 2007-2008 to meet the high demand from global markets. The share of super thin foil in the total volume of production at ARMENAL will rise to 70% once the new equipment reaches its design capacity. The super thin foil is aimed at clients in the USA, Europe, and Middle East. The increase of super thin foil

Starting October 20, 2008, URSA Bank’s most frequently visited offices in the Urals are going to stay open longer. ‘Our customers can now peacefully apply for a loan, have a bank card issued, use a money order, open a bank deposit, top up their accounts or withdraw some money after the end of the regular working day,’ the bank’s press officer said to an UrBC reporter. Such Yekaterinburg-based offices as Generalskiy, Yuzhniy, Dom Kredita, Na Kosmonavtov, and Botanicheskiy now welcome visitors from 9 AM to 9 PM. The same hours have been introduced for the offices located in Krasnoturinsk and

According to UralBusinessConsulting Agency of Information and Analytics’ own sources, Bank24.ru might impose even more sanctions on people and businesses who are trying to take their money out of the bank deposits. For one, the bank might raise the interest rates on loans by 10% in case the loan involves a company that withdrew some working assets from Bank24.ru in September or October 2008. The bank’s call center employee explained the management hadn’t made any official decisions yet but did admit that it was actually not improbable.

Bank Severnaya Kazna’s Chairman Vladimir Frolov said in the course of a Channel 4 program aired on October 18, 2008 that the databases of some local banks could have been stolen. ‘This or that bank’s bankruptcy rumors never hit the provincial towns in the periphery of Yekaterinburg. No gossip ever popped up there. What I think had happened was that someone had stolen quite a few banks’ databases and used the information to ‘warn’ the banks’ private customers and business client against the danger of the bank allegedly going bust. I feel this is a grave circumstance that the Federal Security