Finance magazine looked at the results of Russian banks’ activity over the ten months of 2006 and compiled a rating based on the volume of the working assets (it had to be over $100m). There are currently 278 banks in Russia that meet the requirements of this magazine’s rating, with 40 banks joining the list as recently as this year. The assets of these banks have grown by 31% (up to 10.5 trillion RUR) since the beginning of 2006. According to the magazine, the working assets of SKB-Bank have gone up 48% since the beginning of the year and reached the point of 15.259bn RUR, which made it

‘The court officers managed to obtain part of the financial records of HydroSpetsStroy Ltd. (the general contractor of Noviy Grad, the local developer),’ the company’s trustee in bankruptcy Olga Rushitskaya said to UrBC representative. ‘The builder has for a long time refused to cooperate with me even after the court’s decision. Yet now at least some of the papers needed were received,’ she said. Prior to this, HydroSpetsStroy Ltd. failed to comply with the demand of Sverdlovsk Region Court of Arbitration to produce their financial records before November 15, 2006.

The audit procedure conducted in October 2006 proved that quality management in Uralvneshtorgbank meets the international standard requirements. The bank’s quality management was first certified in the summer of 2004, with the company getting the ISO 9001:2000 certificate. The bank now has to undergo audit yearly in order to prove the certificate validity. This year, the auditors observed that the bank’s top management ‘showed that they were complying with the certificate validity requirements, were committed to the quality management principles and were perfecting this quality. The bank

Following the fire at Reftinskaya power station belonging to OGK-5, two power-generating units with the total capacity of 1,000 megawatt had to be shut down yesterday. As a result, the average capacity of the station went down by 27%. There weer no power cuts, though, as the other local power stations were able to make up for the loss. In the meantime, the share market has already been affected by the accident, claim the experts from a number of investment companies. Reftinskaya power station provides over 40% of OGK-5 capacity, so this company now is the only insider among the other power

‘A claim was laid with Oktyabrskiy court of Yekaterinburg against Mobile TeleSystems by our lawyer Anatoliy Bezrukov who has been using this mobile operator’s services,’ Vladimir Vinnitskiy of the regional Economic Bar said to UrBC representative. ‘We intend to place the case-related documents to the antimonopoly service that will have grounds for taking legal action and sanctioning the operator,’ Mr Vinnitskiy said.

The decision concerning the claim laid by Anatoliy Bezrukov of the regional Economic Bar against Mobile TeleSystems regarding consumer rights protection was made by Oktyabrskiy court of Yekaterinburg on December 20, 2006. The court made Mobile TeleSystems cancel illegal tariff changes made to their Unlimited scheme (the pay was raised from 998 RUR to 1,300 RUR within July 12, 2006 to October 9, 2006), reports the Bar. The court also ordered the operator to cancel the recently introduced limitations on the number of outgoing calls covered by the monthly fee (the limit was set at 2,000 minutes)

‘The average existing office price went up 62% compared to 2005 and amounted to 69,463 RUR per one square meter. Class B offices are the ones that enjoy the greatest demand in Yekaterinburg, so the construction of this type of offices receives the heaviest investment at the moment. The local entrepreneurs are trying to get class B offices, but usually end up having to use class C ones or even lower, that is, offices located on the premises of former research institutes. The price of commercial premises grew by 70%, with the average price per one square meter coming to 85,000 RUR,’ Rustam

Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) is going to put up a plant meant for producing automobile pressings in Saint Petersburg. The solemn laying-of-the-foundation-stone ceremony took place on December 21, 2007. The event was attended by Russian President Vladimir Putin, Governor of Saint Petersburg Valentina Matvienko, and MMK’s Chairman Viktor Rashnikov. Mr. Rashnikov noted that the future plant would deal in full-cycle production of body parts and subunits for automobiles that would be totally comparable with their best foreign counterparts. He also thanked Mr. Putin and Ms Matvienko

According to the Central Bank of Russia, volume of for-profit self-regulatory organizations’ deposits in SberInvestBank valid for 1 to 3 years went down by 21.9% (from 21 million RUR to 16.4 million RUR) in January-November 2007.

Moody’s Investors Service raised SKB-Bank’s B2/Not Prime deposit rating outlook in terms of both ruble and foreign currency deposits from Stable to Positive. The bank’s financial stability rating was confirmed at E+ with the Stable outlook. At the same time, Moody's Interfax (controlled by Moody’s Investors Service) promoted SKB-Bank’s long-term credit rating from Baa1.ru to A3.ru. The new improved ratings and rating outlooks stem from SKB-Bank’s better position on Sverdlovsk Region market and its gradual expansion into the nearby regions as well as the good quality of its assets,

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of loans given by UralTransBank to natural persons for 181 days to 1 year went down by 38.3% (from 339.241 million RUR to 209.303 million RUR).

URSA Bank signed an acquiring agreement with Chudodom chain stores. The chain’s thirteen stores based in Novosibirsk, Barnaul, Kemerovo, and Yekaterinburg are going to get thirty-one POS terminals that will handle cards like Visa Int., MasterCard Int., and Gold Crown, the bank’s press officer reports. Incidentally, URSA Bank started processing bank cards in Sibvez chain stores (forty-eight outlets in Siberian Federal District) and Jewelry 585 chain stores (forty-one outlets in Siberian Federal District) in November 2007. Chudodom owns twenty-five retail outlets selling a range of household

Uralmash Machine Building Corporation and ChMK (part of Mechel Group) signed a strategic partnership agreement regarding the upgrade of ChMK’s metallurgical equipment in 2008-2010. The spokesperson for the corporation reports the two parties appear to be interested in a number of joint projects related to modernization of metallurgical machinery and manufacturing of spare parts for blast furnace, steel-smelting, and rolled metal production shops and oxygen-converter plants. For one, the two companies are planning to restore CC machine No. 2 and blast furnaces No. 3 and No. 5, and to come up

'Sberbank and VTB’s IPOs have definitely become this year’s highlights, whereas the impact of a major mortgage crisis in the U.S. was the Russian bank’s worst nightmare,’ says Andrei Emelyanov, the Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s Strategic Development Director. 'Fortunately, this crisis has not affected the regional banks too badly, and our bank was no exception. This year, the Urals have experienced a sort of ‘invasion’ by the banks from other parts of Russia,’ he adds. 'As for the Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development, this year will probably be

The value of net assets of Energy - Mixed Investments (the unit investment trust) managed by Eurogreen Management Company Ltd. went down by 6.45% between December 14, 2007 and December 17, 2007. According to Eurogreen’s website, the company’s net assets decreased from 3,674,402.03 RUR on December 14, 2007 to 3,437,540.33 RUR on December 17, 2007.

Russian Copper Company coordinated an exhibition of Russian copper castings that date back to the 12th to the 20th century. The exhibition, located in Yekaterinburg, features 400 items, most of which are portrayals of various saints. The opening ceremony took place in the Cathedral-on-Blood on St. Nicholas’s Day. All the exhibits come from Russian Copper Company’s collection, supervised by the Central Museum of Old Russian Culture and Art in Moscow. Visitors can attend the exhibition from 9 AM to 20 PM beginning from December 20, 2007.

Over the nine months that Aston Group and Sverdlovsk Gubernskiy Bank’s joint mortgage program has been running, no mortgager has moved in in their apartment yet. According to the company’s website, even the first part of Aston Group’s housing complex in Yekaterinburg’s Zheleznodorozhniy district has been completed yet. The mortgage program was launched in March 2007.

Nizhniy Tagil Iron & Steel Works (part of Evraz Group) has successfully finished testing the dust-exhaust system of its first converter; the latter underwent an overhaul and was launched in November 2007 as part of the company’s four-year steel-smelting equipment upgrade project. The enterprise’s environmental experts had been gauging the machine’s conservation system’s performance for seventy-two hours and came to a conclusion that upgrading the first converter resulted in cutting down on atmospheric emissions by 2.5 times (from 200 milligrams per cubic meter of air to 80 milligrams per

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of call loans given by Tyumenbank to for-profit self-regulatory organizations went down by 75.76% (from 4.03 million RUR to 977,000 RUR) in January-November 2007.

Rostechnadzor (the state environmental, technological, and nuclear safety watchdog) has recently announced the results of the Environmental Management 2007 contest among the enterprises based in Ural Federal District. Nizhniy Tagil Iron & Steel Works (CEO Alexander Kushnarev) won the first prizes in three main categories, that is, Corporate Environmental Management System, Best Corporate Environmental Program, and Waste Treatment Achievements. In addition, the enterprise won the second prizes in the following categories: Atmospheric Protection Achievements and Surface Water Protection