URSA Bank went through with the issue of 194,163,000,000 preference shares with face value of 1 RUR each. The shares were offered at $2.1 per share, which brought the bank $407.8 million. The annual dividends were declared at $.081 per share. The money thus obtained by URSA Bank will be spent on business development. The issue was generally coordinated by Troika Dialog, the major bookrunner, with the help of HSBС Bank Plc that dealt with the share distribution in Asia and the Middle East. The shares were acquired by a large variety of both Russian and foreign investors. Troika Dialog reports

'Some officers from the regional public prosecution authorities and from Sverdlovsk Region Department of Internal Affairs conducted a search of the Main Architectural Administration in the building of the city council on July 3, 2007. These twenty or so people managed to virtually paralyze the land allotment department,’ the spokesperson for the city council Konstantin Pudov said to a UrBC reporter. 'The officers withdrew about 100 files on land allotments. We don’t quite understand what the authorities actually meant to do, as we have always provided all the data needed

Evraz Group started selling some assets of Highveld Steel and Vanadium Corporation Limited in accordance with the regulations imposed by the European Commission and the antimonopoly watchdogs of the Republic of South Africa, the spokesperson for Evraz Group reports. These assets are expected to be acquired by some large steel and vanadium producers as well as private investors. The antimonopoly authorities insist that the buyer should have no connection with either Evraz or Highveld whatsoever and should not depend on either of the two. Then, the buyer must have finances, expertise and work

'If AMUR car factory is not allowed to deal in industrial assembling of cars, we will have to rethink our production strategy. We won’t stop producing cars altogether, but we’ll definitely be making fewer of them,’ the company’s Personnel, Social Issues, and IT Director Grigory Vanshtein said to UrBC. 'I have to say that we won’t be able to reduce the prime cost without the industrial assembling, so this is going to affect our profit and therefore the investments we make in production development,’ he noted. 'To make matters worse, having no permit means we are not going to get

'The energy issue is vital to the long-term development of both the Urals and the entire country. Chelyabinsk Region has nearly reached its highest consumption figures recorded in 1990. A few years ago, our electricity consumption only grew by about 2% a year on average, whereas last year, the figure went up by 6.86%,’ Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin announced at a meeting of the Council under Plenipotentiary Representative of Russian Federation President in Ural Federal District. 'Both the consumption and shortage of electricity are going to increase alongside with the

The public prosecution authorities of Ural Federal District and the investigative forces of the Russian Federation Ministry of Internal Affairs revealed the crimes committed by Sergey Nastin, the director of state-owned Electrohimpribor (based in Lesnoy, Sverdlovsk Region) and placed his case with the court, charging Mr. Nastin with abuse of power driven by lucrative impulses. The inquiry team revealed that on behalf of the enterprise he was running, Mr. Nastin signed a fictitious agreement regarding information services allegedly provided by a supposititious company. According to this

According to the Central Bank of Russia, volume of profit-making self-regulatory organizations’ deposits in UralTransBank valid for 180 days to 1 year went down by 38% (from 58.549 million RUR to 36.006 million RUR) in January-April 2007.

The Bank of Russia evaluated the data available on the volume of mortgage loans provided by the banks in different parts of the country in the first quarter of the year. According to these data, Russian banks have provided their customers with 61,940,034,000 RUR worth of mortgage loans by April 1, 2007. SKB-Bank’s Mortgage Lending Director Anna Samuilova says this success has been brought about by a long-term history of processing mortgages and clear and smooth loan-issuing procedures. As regards Sverdlovsk Region, for instance, the first mortgage was offered by a local bank as far back as

According to the Central Bank of Russia, the volume of natural persons’ investments and deposits in GRAN Bank valid for 91 days to 180 days went down by 7% (from 326.024 million RUR to 302.709 million RUR) in January-April 2007.

The Russian Federation Ministry of Economic Development and the Russian Federation Ministry of Industry and Energy decided to put off signing contracts on assembling Chinese cars in Russia until September 15, 2007. The two ministries are reluctant to sign the agreements before mid-September since the assembling scheme proposed by these agreements allows for a duty-free import of car parts, which is actually against the WTO regulations. According to Kommersant newspaper, this uncertainty questions the future of four projects currently considered by the Ministry of Economic Development: the

Andrei Nikolin was appointed IES Multiutilities CEO on July 2, 2007, the company’s press officer reports. Mr. Nikolin had been employed as CEO of SverdlovEnergoSbyt’s Eastern branch since April 2005 and became IES Multiutilities’ Managing Director on April 2, 2007. His new post meant Mr. Nikolin had to supervise the company’s further business development. It was then that the then CEO Leonid Chetverkin was unofficially reported to be leaving office. Mr. Chetverkin, who had been the company’s CEO since July 1, 2006, decided to go for something different from his former post and is now

In June 2007 Sverdlovsk Region’s consumer price index exceeded the figures for May 2007 by .89% and those for June 2006 by 6.02%, regional statisticians report. The food price index was 1.81% greater than a month earlier and 4.27% greater than in June 2006, whereas the nonfood items price index was .41% greater than in May 2007 and 2.49% greater than a year earlier. The paid services price index exceeded the figures for May 2007 and June 2006 by .41% and 11.07%, respectively.

A plane belonging to Transaero that was supposed to have flown from Yekaterinburg to Moscow was found to be malfunctioning in the morning of July 3, 2007. Eighty passengers had to use an IL 86 belonging to Ural Airlines that took off at 8.15 AM.

Head of Sverdlovsk Region Government Viktor Koksharov chaired a meeting of the governmental presidium devoted to a number of special state programs in 2008. The government intends to spend 341.4 million RUR on the Sverdlovsk Region Environment and Natural Resources Program, with nearly 60% to be invested in prevention of emergencies caused by mismanagement of industrial and consumption waste; some money will also be spent on providing the population with suitable quality water and on helping people who live in environmentally challenged areas rehabilitate. The meeting participants laid

President of Russian Railways Public Company Vladimir Yakunin introduced the new head of South Ural Railways Vladimir Moldaver to Governor of Chelyabinsk Region Petr Sumin on July 3, 2007. Mr. Sumin welcomed the new appointee and said he believed the regional government and the railway company executives would be able to keep on cooperating and providing mutual support. The spokesperson for the Governor reports Mr. Sumin spoke very highly of the joint project aimed at restoring a railway station in Chelyabinsk that has now become one of Russia’s best.

Ural Airlines has already sold five times more tickets as of July 1, 2007 against July 2006. The carrier’s press officer reports 5% of their customers prefer online booking at the moment, which is one of the highest figures among Russian airlines. Sochi and Moscow have always been the most popular destinations for the company’s clients, so these destinations are also the ones most often booked online. The recent increase in e-sales can be explained by matters of convenience, appealing tariffs, and absence of fuel fees for some destinations. E-booking is mainly used by people who are

MDM Bank Ural acquired a new name and is now known as Bank EEFC Ural (aka Bank VEFK Ural). 'This is part of a re-branding process connected with the acquisition of the bank’s entire capital by East European Finance Corporation on November 17, 2006. We haven’t been able to give the company a new name before because we needed to have all the papers approved by the Central Bank of Russia first,’ Bank EEFC Ural’s Customer Service Development Director Evgeniy Durnev said to UrBC. 'At the same time, the bank is not going to operate any differently now that it’s owned by someone new. We

Metallurgical Industrial Complex of Nizhniy Tagil (part of Evraz Group) had two of its inventions patented, which can be officially verified by two writs of protection issued by Rospatent (the state intellectual property, patents, and trademarks agency). The company now has all the rights over the inventions that were launched on its premises in 2006. These have never been used anywhere before, and the economic benefits of using them are now being evaluated. The models were designed by the company’s metallurgists themselves, the spokesperson for Evraz Group reports. The employees of

The investigative forces of the Ministry of Internal Affairs looked into a criminal case connected with large-scale fraud (a group of swindlers stealing money from Russian Standard Bank) and were able to accuse the offenders of setting up a criminal conspiracy. The results of the inquiry indicate that the perpetrators designed a way of stealing money with the help of bank cards. They managed to crimp a number of post office clerks in Siberia and the Urals and had some of their accomplices employed at the post offices into the bargain. The fraudsters were thus able to open and inspect some

According to the Central Bank of Russia, volume of natural persons’ investments and deposits in SberInvestBank valid for 31 days to 90 days went down by 68% (from 1.988 million RUR to 626,000 RUR) in January-May 2007.