MOTIV, one of Sverdlovsk Region’s mobile operators, came up with a new tariff scheme that came to be called NEXT FRESH. The new tariff’s major peculiarity is that your conversations are being charged per every second (rather than minute), and all outgoing calls will cost you only .03 RUR per second regardless of whether you call someone who is MOTIV‘s subscriber or not, MOTIV’s press officer reports. In addition, all calls within MOTIV’s network are only charged for the first minute of one’s conversation and are free from then on. 'Over the eleven years of our existence, MOTIV has come

According to the Central Bank of Russia, volume of loans given by SberInvestBank to for-profit self-regulatory organizations for 181 days to 1 year went down by 11.9% (from 102.062 million RUR to 89.9 million RUR) in January-November 2007.

According to the Central Bank of Russia, volume of loans given by UralTransBank to natural persons for 31 to 90 days went down by 36.91% (from 1.769 million RUR to 1.116 million RUR) in January-October 2007.

Rus-Bank’s management declared the company acquired 98.42% of Ural Treasures Bank’s shares. According to Rus-Bank’s Marketing Director Dmitriy Yurzvaig, the bank has only entered the Urals relatively recently, so acquiring an important local player with a developed regional network looked like a good way of building up Rus-Bank’s share of the local market. Ural Treasures Bank held an EGM on October 8, 2007 in order to accept or reject a few BOD members’ resignation. A new Board of Directors was elected, and three Rus Bank representatives became BOD members, even though no serious bids were

'There is no road to Kruglykino either within 174 kilometers of Yekaterinburg or anywhere in Sverdlovsk Region. Our Chevrolet TrailBlazer ad that mentions Yekaterinburg only uses fictional images that were composed out of various photographs of bad roads,’ Olga Mescheryakova, an account manager of Leo Bernet Agency, Moscow, said to UrBC. Ms Mescheryakova believes this ad has no way of doing any harm to Sverdlovsk Region’s image, as the ad only features a remote country road and not a state highway. The negative image of the region has been used by General Motors to promote its new

The federal authorities are planning to invest more than 3.3 trillion RUR in the development of various regions of the country, the spokesperson for the Governor of Sverdlovsk Region reports. Sverdlovsk Region might expect to receive at least 3% of the total allocated sum to invest in a number of innovational projects, yet this could prove difficult, since the region is now only 18th on the federal investment priority list. Experts believe the situation could be improved through setting up some regional NGOs that would attract, accumulate, and direct the resources to innovational economic

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of loans given by Sverdlovsk Gubernskiy Bank to sole traders for 181 days to 1 year went down by 66.25% (from 21.558 million RUR to 10.652 million RUR) in January-October 2007.

Quite a number of banks are trying to set up offices that specialize either in offering loans to or opening deposits for customers today. According to SKB-Bank’s Deposit Director Denis Belogurov, SKB-Bank does not normally divide its offices in, so to say, ‘donors’ and ‘recipients’. 'We see our main task as meeting the business plan which has been balanced in terms of our assets and liabilities. We haven’t got offices that would only deal in either loans or deposits, even though I’m not saying this can never happen some time in the future. And we do have Taganskiy Ryad office that is

The value of net assets of Energy - Mixed Investments (the unit investment trust) managed by Eurogreen Management Company Ltd. went down by .35 % between November 27, 2007 and November 28, 2007. According to Eurogreen’s website, the company’s net assets decreased from 3,752,515.4 RUR on November 27, 2007 to 3,739,464.82 RUR on November 28, 2007.

'Quite a few airports have already informed the carriers that fuel is going to become more expensive, but we decided to keep our flight fares the same for the time being, so our customers haven’t felt the price increase yet,’ Aviaprad Airline’s Air Transportation Director Nadezhda Azarina says. Ms Azarina reports ticket prices are to remain the same until the end of the week. It is possible, however, that prices may go up as soon as Monday. A price increase is expected in December due to aviation kerosene growing 12%-14% more costly. This may lead to the overall price increase of

'The whole issue around Chevrolet TrailBlazer's ad campaign must be considered from two different angles, that is, from the viewpoint of customers and that of Sverdlovsk Region. Any advertising campaign is aimed at raising sales, and Yekaterinburg was chosen for the ad with good reason: it is believed to be Russia’s average city, and most effective ads always use some specific data. I believe the ad was targeted at central parts of Russia where people don’t know a lot about the state of Sverdlovsk Region’s roads. It is quite possible that the ad uses a photo flat, or the picture was

According to the Central Bank of Russia, volume of loans given by Ural Innovational Commercial Bank to natural persons for 1 to 3 years went down by 57.92% (from 27.811 million RUR to 11.703 million RUR) in January-October 2007.

'There is no settlement of Kruglykino in Sverdlovsk Region, even though Chevrolet TrailBlazer uses the name in one of its latest ads. The name was most likely made up, and the photograph used in the ad could have been taken in any part of Russia,’ the region’s Highway Administration reports. The negative image of the region has been used by General Motors to promote its new Chevrolet TrailBlazer: the ad features a new car ‘capable of defying Russian roads’ and says that ‘when you are trying to reach your goal, trifles like bad roads don’t matter.’ In addition, there is a photograph of a

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of loans given by Bank UralSib to state-run for-profit organizations for 31 to 90 days went down by 15.28% (from 212 million RUR to 179.6 million RUR) in January-October 2007.

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of loans given by Pervouralsk Joint Stock Commercial Bank to sole traders for 181 days to 1 year went down by 55.3% (from 33.743 million RUR to 15.083 million RUR) in January-October 2007.

Officers of Yekaterinburg Customs inspected one of local fur-selling companies in November 2007. The inspection revealed that the company had smuggled forty-six Chinese mink coats worth 718,000 RUR to Russia. The coats were bought on Moscow’s trade markets; besides, the Moscow suppliers provided the local company with some forged documents that confirmed the alleged customs procedure had taken place. As a result, the local fur-dealer had to pay 216,200 RUR to make up for the customs duties it never paid; the fictitious documents have been placed with Moscow’s law-enforcement agencies, the

Central Bank of Russia reports volume of loans given by Universal Commercial Bank to sole traders for over three years went down by 15,72% (from 8.778 million RUR to 7.398 million RUR).

Russia has gone through the recent global crisis successfully, the World Bank declared a couple of days ago. The country is enjoying stability, which can be proved by the fact that the net influx of capital to Russia reached $10bn in October 2007. According to the World Bank, Russia’s banking sector received as much as $37.6bn in terms of net influx of capital in January-September 2007, with $700m received in the third quarter of the year (compared with $15.7bn in July-August 2006), the Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s press officer reports. Then, even though the volume of

'The company’s management gave up on all the principles of their own quality policies to make the public believe a strike in Leningrad Region is not affecting the corporation’s performance as a whole,’ Chairman of Ford Motor Company’s trade union Alexei Etmanov says. He reports the whole Quality Control Department of Ford’s Russian factory joined the strikers and will not resume working until the negotiations with the management begin. 'The plant is now producing only 30 instead of the required 120 cars per shift, so I feel truly sorry for the customers who are going to get the